


Saving Ben Solo

by DoodleBopMom



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo Deserved Better, Ben and Rey are both 20 years old, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Dyad (Star Wars), Luke Skywalker's Jedi Academy, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rey Needs A Hug (Star Wars), Rey came to kick grandpa's ass and save her soulmate, Rey's father can't catch a break, Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren Spoilers, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:41:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 26,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27273604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoodleBopMom/pseuds/DoodleBopMom
Summary: “Ben,” he said, embarrassment creeping its way through his gut and spreading hotly over his neck. “My name is Ben.”“Ben.” There was something about the way she said it that made his skin ripple in a shiver. His attention was drawn to her again, and he watched as her eyes closed and her lips stretched into a thoughtful sort of smile. Her head tilted to the side and before Ben could really help it, he picked up on a wave of emotion from her. Something like grief, longing and hope. It was a strange, amorphous mixture that he couldn't make any sense of before it was immediately gone.No, not gone. Shut away.Ben's nearly choked on his own tongue when the realization hit him. She was force-sensitive.The girl’s eyes were bright as she looked at him. “I'm Rey.”He stared at her dumbly. “You're the new student.”
Relationships: Leia Organa/Han Solo, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 49
Kudos: 116





	1. Chapter 1

* * *

Ben walked towards his uncle's hut in the dimming twilight of the evening. His thin linen robes clung uncomfortably to his skin, sticky from the suffocatingly humid air of the late summer. The sky of Yavin 4 bled into a symphony of colors, oranges, magentas and purples, the stars of distant systems glittering through lazily migrating clouds.

The seasons were changing, and with it the weather. Monsoons were overdue after a summer parched by drought, and even though the muggy air grew heavier and more suffocating each day, to the point of misery, it still refused to break. The gardens behind the temple that grew a portion of their food didn't thrive well without natural rains, and had produced a small harvest. Tonight's meal of thin stew and re-hydrated protein loaf was the disappointing result.

In the ten years that the temple had been open and housing students, it was probably the first time ration packs had needed to be opened _ever,_ but the temple was housing a large number of guests and their low stores were being stretched even thinner. His choices were to eat what was available or go hungry, and Ben disliked being hungry even more than the portion packs.

The Jedi padawan had an intense dislike for many things in his life, but feeling hunger was above all else, something that he simply couldn't tolerate. Ever since he'd really been thrown into the hell that was puberty, his body struggled to keep up with itself. He needed energy. For growing, for training, for using the force. Sometimes it felt as though a part of him, somewhere outside of himself but a very _real_ part of him, was starving. _All the time_ . Usually it was just a feeling in the back of his mind, and adults would have jokingly chalked it up to a growing teenage boy being able to eat for an army, especially with him growing as _big_ as he was. Sometimes, it would be a roar in his blood, and he'd feel as though his body were trying to eat itself. It blocked everything else out and he'd be consumed with the singular need to _eat_. For calories and hydration, for sustenance. More than once Ben had been driven to gorge himself, consuming enough food to fill a family and leave him exhausted and bedridden afterward. Sometimes feeling hungry would set off an episode, and he didn't want to experience it while the temple's food supply was so low. So, even though it left him no small amount of kriffing _irked_ , poly-starch protein loaf was the lesser of two evils, and what was for dinner.

In the early days, when it was only Ben and Luke, before the other students had started to come, people would have pilgrim journeys to seek wisdom from the last Jedi, or offer gifts as tribute to him like he were some sainted holy-chosen hero. They offered him money, food, ships, castles and titles. Wealth beyond measure, enough supplies to feed a country. Ben had watched in a sort of awe as a young boy when he'd seen his uncle time after time turn the gifts away. Luke was very humble, and the only thing he had ever asked for was help constructing the temple. Ben remembered how speechless he had felt the first time he'd come and seen it. How pure the force was here, and how pride had rolled off of his uncle in waves. It was Luke's _home_.

Eventually, over the years, the pilgrimages lessened, and now there were only two a year, usually led by devout followers of the religion of the Force. Lor San Tekka was visiting now, and was huddled up in Luke's small hut at the end of the longest path from the temple, as was their norm. Ben was still yards away from them and could hear their deep, boisterous laughter.

It was almost strange to hear his uncle so jovial and animated. "...the one who could fish it out of the pipes. Only my arms were small enough to fit."

"Did your life flash before your eyes?"

"Seconds felt like _years_ , I was just waiting to get bit," Luke recalled fondly. His voice was quieted with Ben's distance from the hut. "I got lucky, I didn't, but my uncle sure was chewed out when my aunt learned he'd let me do it." The two men roared with laughter again, and Ben listened to it, strangely fascinated at the sound.

"The galaxy is never sparse on snakes, old friend."

"Or deserts," Luke chuckled. Ben heard his uncle laugh before, but it had been a long time. Months, maybe. Luke was a calm and nearly stoic master and not... well, not a friend, certainly. His uncle was barely even approachable, and often cowed people with his mere presence.

To hear his Master gwaffing at something like a young man lifted Ben's sour mood. He approached his Master's home and knocked politely on the frame of the door. Pushing the curtain aside and stepping in, his eyes immediately found the two older men sitting in wooden chairs, cups half-full of something green in their hands.

The oldest of the three men stood from his seat and waved Ben over. "Ah! Young Solo! You've brought dinner for us, how kind!" He had an accent that could have been called Imperial, but was smooth and proud and hinted at his intelligence.

Ben lifted the bundled food easily and passed it to the temple guest. Luke set his cup down and offered his student a sturdy basket to sit on. "Did you eat?"

Ben stood awkwardly for a moment. His uncle didn't usually allow him to stay and talk for the sake of company. "I'll be grateful when Voe and Mara come back with supplies in a few days,” he relented, and eased onto the improvised seat. The basket wasn't very tall and his knees were practically on his chest, but he did his best to ignore the discomfort. “I ate before I came,” he said eventually, and Luke must have picked up on how much he enjoyed the experience.

The Jedi Master snorted in a very un-sagely way. "Honestly, Ben. Portions aren't that bad."

"I beg to differ."

"My boy, _pray_ you never suffer a visit to my planet." San Tekka sniggered. Ben realized then that whatever they were sipping was getting them drunk. His eyebrows must have shot to his hairline because Luke instantly offered him a glass, half-full of the drink.

"It's _Rii'a's Nectar,_ " his uncle explained, bobbing his head and rolling his wrist, turning his attention towards his meager dinner and encouraging the boy to take a sip.

"It's a delicacy from Jakku. The fruit that makes it only flowers once every five years, after the cold season. We've had a bountiful harvest. I thought I'd bring some for my friend this visit."

It wasn't as sweet tasting as it smelled, and the thickness of the liquid clung to his throat and burned. He coughed, and pulled the cup away, his face twisting. San Tekka laughed loudly, dipping his bread into his soup. "The first sip is always the worst."

"The second sip isn't much better." Luke's eyes twinkled in mirth.

Ben did his best to not pull a face at the burn of the drink and instead focused on the blooming heat in his gut it caused. It was relaxing, and spreading heavily through his arms and legs. "You came early this year," he worded slowly, trying to be conversational.

The group of Force devouts that Lor San Tekka headed usually came in the thick of winter, dressed poorly and staying longer than any other group. They’d been here for two days now, a small village of around fifty being allowed to come and go and pray at the temple as they pleased, so long as they didn’t cause disruption. They tended to stay near their transport vessel anyway, except for San Tekka himself, who usually spent time with Luke.

The two older men grew a bit silent. "Yes," San Tekka said, lowering his bowl to his lap. There was a sort of reverent joy in his voice when he spoke next, "we've had a blessing come to us.”

“Oh?” Ben looked up, curiosity getting the better of him.

Luke folded his arms into the thin grey robe he wore. “They've brought a potential student.”

Ben's eyes widened. His 'class', if you could call it that, was only of six students. Luke had been very adamant that he knew his limits and six was all he could handle. It was jarring to hear his uncle speak as though he were considering breaking his own rules.

“Why?" Ben asked. "Are they special?”

“The child is... odd.” Lor San Tekka stilled a moment, and worked his jaw in a way that made it obvious he was thinking. "No, not odd. _Curious_. Yes, very curious."

Ben's face felt warm. He glanced down at the cup in his hand and decided that he quite liked the smell of the nectar drink. He took another sip, it didn't burn going down this time. He didn't want to ask how the kid was _odd_ . He was intimately aware of all of his own _oddities_ and hated when people commented on them. 

It may have been the uninhibiting nature of the drink, but Ben found himself relaxing. His uncle's company was easy tonight. It was refreshing and...nice. 

“Kid's _powerful_ .” Luke grumbled, and reached up to scratch his beard. He ignored his nephew's intense attention and continued. “Figured out a lot on _instinct_.”

Ben snorted. “What, lifting rocks?” He instantly regretted the remark when Luke shot him a look that made Ben's mouth run dry. “I mean, it's pretty rare for a _kid_ to figure out how to manipulate physical matter on instinct—I've never seen it, anyway.”

Luke scoffed. " _You_ did it."

“I’ve never seen anyone _else_ do it,” Ben relented with rolled eyes. "My strength of connection to the Force, and my being able to manipulate it as much as I did and as young as I was isn't _normal_."

San Tekka made a sound and raised his glass to his mouth, covering the lower half of his face. The amusement was clear.

Ben felt like there was a joke between them that was going over his head. It made him feel like _they were toying with him, and laughing at his ignorance_. Ben pushed the thought away and growled out a terse “What?” when they just kept looking amused.

Luke's smile fell quickly.

" _Ben_ " his uncle warned. He turned his head away stubbornly and took a large gulp of the nectar in his cup.

“Brave lad,” the oldest chuckled, shaking his head as Ben hacked a sharp gasping cough. San Tekka stood and turned to Luke, threatening to pitch forward a bit, unbalanced on his feet. After a moment he stilled, chuckled again, and ran his hands over the front of his robes. “Alas, old friend, my tired bones are telling me it's time for sleep.”

Luke nodded and stood, as did Ben. The small hut became very crowded with the three of them, and Ben quickly pushed the curtain door aside and exited out of the small dwelling and back into the intensely miserable humidity of Yavin 4. Lor San Tekka stumbled out shortly after, and lastly, Luke stood at the threshold, empty bowls in his hands. He passed them to Ben quietly, and patted the boy on the shoulder. “See Lor San Tekka to his ship, and take those back to the kitchen.”

Ben nodded, feeling a bit of disappointment. With himself and his temper, and the brevity of his time with his uncle. “Yes, Master Luke.” He must have projected or had some sort of tone to his voice when he spoke, because his uncle called out to him again, a little softer.

“Get some sleep,” the Jedi said, sounding old and tired but warm. “I sense that tomorrow will be a test for all of us.”

“Oh, don't sound so _defeated_ ,” Lor San Tekka chortled. He clapped a hand on Ben's shoulder and shook it heartily. The young padawan nearly lost his balance and stumbled onto the cobbled path ungracefully. “Come now, young Solo! Let's walk!” Ben shot his uncle a half-pleading look. Luke just waved them off with an extremely amused shake of his head and disappeared back into his hut.

Lor San Tekka nearly crashed into Ben before he'd fully righted himself and nearly did fall over. “Are you sure you _can_ walk?” He watched the old man sway a bit further to the left than was probably intentional, and rolled his eyes.

“The roads of life are often long and winding, but the Force is with me and I am--" he actually hiccuped "--with the Force.”

Ben snorted.

San Tekka's shoulder shook, and he put more effort into walking a straighter line on the path. “Tell me about yourself, Ben. It's been so long since you and I have spoken! You were just a boy, and now look at you, a man. You're as tall as a Wookie these days.”

Ben very ungracefully stumbled over his own feet. His head swam with the nectar and when he would normally be mortified of nearly tripping, he struggled to keep a chuckle from bubbling up his throat. “I'm not that tall,” he tried to argue, futility. At 6'3 he was easily the tallest human at the temple. Ben had no idea where in his family his height came from, but at the temple only Hennix was taller than him. Then again, as a Quarran, Hennix was taller than most things.

“Bah,” San Tekka dismissed. He waved his hand and sort of went with it, walking so far to the right he nearly bumped into his escort. “You seem to be in a mood. Is everything alright?”

Ben's lips pressed into a thin line. “Being _'in a mood'_ is how anyone would describe me _regularly_ ,” he grumbled. Realizing he said the thought out loud when the older man laughed again, his face and ears burned hot.

Curse that nectar.

The old man 'hummed', looking a bit distant. "I was the same way at your age. Broody and impatient and ready to prove myself any way I could."

"Time has changed you, it seems."

"Time doesn't change people," San Tekka countered, and hiccuped again, " _reflection_ does."

Ben gave him a confused look. "Reflection?"

The old man shrugged and gesticulated to his surroundings and to Ben as he spoke. "Reflection of the world, of the self, of actions and consequences. Someone must see their own error and be _willing_ to change or they never will."

Ben grew quiet. "No," he said after a moment, "I think there are people who can never change...even if they want to."

Lor San Tekka hummed. "Maybe," he mused, "maybe not. If I've learned nothing else in all my 64 years, it's to never say never."

A pregnant silence passed between them, then, softly, the old man spoke. "I know your family, I know you struggle with—”

Ben said the first thing that came to mind to change the subject. He knew the old man was angling towards talking about his parents and that was the absolute last thing he wanted to do right now. “—I had a strange dream last week.”

Lor San Tekka seemed to have taken the bait, and turned towards Ben with a curious twinkle in his eye. “A dream, you say?”

Ben swallowed, suddenly wishing he had never said anything. Or at least, literally _anything else_. “I've always had the dream. Ever since I was a kid. It's always felt, I don't know...far away.”

The old man hummed. “Until it didn't?”

“Yeah,” Ben agreed, “until it didn't.”

“What is this dream?” San Tekka asked curiously.

Ben huffed. He'd already spoken more in the last hour than he had in the last week and it was giving him a headache. “I don't know. It's not really in images. It's… feelings, I guess. Emotions.”

He waved his hand in front of him in a useless and dismissive manner. When the old man turned his eyes towards Ben, waiting quietly for him to continue, he took a deep breath and raked his fingers through his dark hair. “In the dream I'm by myself. It's empty everywhere, and I feel alone. Then there's something else. Some _one_ else, I think. They're warm and...bright, like sunlight. It pulls like gravity, slow and heavy, but far away. I don't know how to describe it. It's comforting. I've always liked the dream.”

Ben chanced a glance at the old man, and saw that his wrinkled and sun-belted face was stony. The young man's lips curled down into a frown, and his walking slowed. San Tekka slowed with him, his arms folded into the sleeves of his robes. Ben balled his hands into fists for a moment, immediately thinking that San Tekka was standing there, judging his dream, judging him. Hot anger flashed through him, and a thought niggled its way into his mind that this is what happens when you open up to people. Share _nothing_ , keep it all inside, _they don't really care about you—_

“Please continue,” San Tekka said after a moment, lifting his eyes and looking towards the padawan. Ben was thrown from his thoughts, his hazy mind struggling to hold onto what he had been thinking, exactly. He angled his face to the ground, blinked once, and then turned again to San Tekka. The man was looking at him curiously, and it was then that Ben realized he had not been silent and judging, but had been patient and listening. It shocked him, and he stood up a bit straighter, and cleared his throat.

“Um,” he started, and could have kicked himself for sounding so dumb. “...well, the dream had always been the same, ever since I started having it. Then last week, it...shifted.” Ben stopped walking all together and looked down into the cobbled stone of the pathway. Lor San Tekka stopped beside him, waiting for him to continue on his own. “It's like… the other one was suddenly closer. Too close. It's _always_ been moving closer, like gravity, like I said,” Ben explained helplessly, “but it shouldn't have moved so close so _fast_. Something must have happened.”

The old man nodded thoughtfully. “Wise prophets of the Force say that dreams are just one of many ways for those chosen,” Ben knew he meant force-sensitives in general. “can listen to what It's telling us.” The religion of the Force was older than the Jedi or the Sith, and had its own strange branches and ways to interpret it. Oracles, healers and soul-soothers were all different parts of the Church of the Force, and Lor San Tekka was a priest of sorts, even if he wasn't _'chosen'_. It was a way for those non-sensitive and unawakened could still be close to it, could ask for its wisdom and let it guide them through their lives.

Ben was oddly relieved that he had accidentally opened up to Lor San Tekka. He had never sought the old man's counsel before, and wondered what advice the old man would be able to give him.

“It sounds to me like there is something ahead of you that you are meant to confront.” He said as he turned towards Ben, standing fully in front of him and clapping his hands onto the young man's shoulders. It was starting to irritate him, he didn't like to be touched in general and he'd been clapped at and patted on a half-dozen times since he delivered dinner.

Ben pushed the aggravation away and focused on the man in front of him. Though Ben was taller, they were of a similar height, and he didn't have to bend his head down to look the old man in his bright, wise blue eyes. “You say you've always taken comfort in this feeling of light and warmth, but only at a distance. Only with the understanding that there is a significant amount of _time_ before you have to actually face it.”

There was a tightness in Ben's chest, and an emotion that he didn't want to put attention on. He lifted his head instead and petulantly jutted his jaw, but stayed quiet as the other man spoke.

“It's easy to think that our dreams are entirely our own,” San Tekka started, squeezing Ben's shoulders in a reassuring way. It gave Ben more comfort than he'd like to admit. “The Force flows through all things, It knows our worth more than any of us ever could. It is It's will that you are chosen, it is It's will that you have had this dream, and it is It's will that you are ready for the next part of your journey, whatever that may mean.”

Ben didn't feel ready, but he did feel heard. He nodded his head slowly and managed a very strangled and very sincere _“thank you”_ over the lump in his throat.

Lor San Tekka smiled brightly at him, and patted the young man's shoulders once more before letting his arms fall away. “You are _very_ welcome, young Solo. May the Force be with you.”

Ben's lips twitched and threatened to smile. “May the Force be with you, too.” They were close to the temple's shipyard. There were a few transport vehicles and an x-wing that Luke owned, but towards the back was a much larger freight transport that easily fit the large group on their religious travels. There was a large bonfire off a ways, logs having been laid to act as seats. Lor San Tekka gave Ben a much less wobbly bow before wishing him a goodnight and heading towards his people.

Ben stood awkwardly at the crossroad for a moment. He was tempted to walk San Tekka the rest of the way, but also didn't want to be surrounded by the pilgrims. They stayed away from the padawans because they knew they weren't supposed to get too close. If Ben walked willingly into their camp he knew they'd swarm him with prayers and little gifts. They'd done it before when he was a child and once was enough. Instead, he stayed rooted on the walkway and at least observed from a distance as the old man meandered past the ships until he finally disappeared into his own transport vessel. A group of elderly women waved and bowed to Ben, he raised an arm as if to acknowledge them and finally turned away.

The temple was only a ten minute walk away, and it's large, intricately carved doors were unlocked and slightly ajar. He made a face at the sight, huffing in annoyance as he closed them. Someone would need to have a talk with the pilgrims if they were going to disrespect the temple and leave it open for wild animals to get in. The doors were made of a very heavy and hard wood, twenty feet high and hand-carved with intricate murals of Jedi lore. They took a lot of effort to move, the hinges groaning loudly under the pressure of Ben's strength and a subtle push of the Force. When they finally closed, it bathed the great hall behind him in a bit of darkness. Firelight glowed warmly behind him, flickering with the subtle change of air pressure.

Ben shifted the bowls and cups in his hand and turned around, stopping short at a shift in shadows ahead of him. His eyes shot up, and looked around the great hall. Immediately, they fell on the thin figure of a young woman. He couldn't make out her features in the dim light, but could see that she had dark hair tied up into three stacking buns on the back of her head.

The great hall was the first receiving area of the temple. It's walls were rowed with inlets that each held a life-sized statue of a former grand-master Jedi. The smallest and most prominent among them stood Master Yoda, a little alien with large ears and the wisdom of a thousand years etched into his wrinkled face. His statue stood above the frame of another large set of doors, leading to the inner sanctum. There were tables in front of the doors, covered with an impressive decoration of candles and hand-made offerings to the temple. Hand-woven wicker baskets full of linen cloth, beads and various glasswares were piled in front of the table. A long, plain carpet was laid in front of the offerings where the pilgrims would sit and pray, often to the statues themselves and hoping that somehow they, who had become one with the Force, would be able to pass their words and wishes into the Force as a sort of messenger.

The floors of the hall were a massive mosaic of constellations and legendary figures of Jedi lore. Every stone hand-picked, hand-carved, hand-polished and hand-placed by historians and artists working together to give the temple as much authenticity as was possible.

“What are you doing?” He asked after a moment, squinting as he took a few steps closer.

The girl stood in the middle of the room, centered at the base of one of the depicted legends. She had been staring down at it, but was now looking squarely at Ben. His balance wasn't completely recovered yet, and there was still a slight bit of haze in the back of his mind, but he knew it was after hours and that the pilgrims shouldn't be in the temple without Lor San Tekka or Luke there.

“I'm sorry, I...” she trailed off suddenly. Ben noted that her voice sounded young, and had an accent that sounded a lot like Lor San Tekka's. He wondered if maybe she were his granddaughter for a fleeting second, but dismissed it as soon as it came. He would have known if the old man had any family.

He stopped a few feet away from her, looking at her a bit more now that he was closer. She was his age, probably. The girl was dressed in a shapeless dark travel poncho, probably more than a little uncomfortable in the muggy late-summer air. Her lower legs were bare and revealed muscular calves that stretched down to thin ankles, disappearing into dark, short leather boots that had seen better days. The boots shuffled a bit as she turned to face him more, and his attention shot up to her face.

She had a wide brow that was accentuated by the high angles of her cheekbones. Her almond-shaped eyes were lined by thick dark lashes, brightening the gold-flecked hazel color of her irises. They seemed to almost glitter with the ethereal reflection of the candles just ahead. Her face was sun-kissed and dusted lightly with freckles, and her slightly thin lips were parted just a bit, pink and teasing the sight of straight white teeth. Tendrils of wavy dark hair framed her face, loose from her severe styling. They contrasted sharply against the overall pale color of her skin and stuck just slightly to the sweat moistened skin of her thin neck.

She looked like any of the other Jakku pilgrims but the way she held herself, the spread of her feet and the posture of her straight back told him that she was someone who carried herself with hidden strength. Someone with weight on their shoulders. What kind of weight, he couldn't begin to speculate, but it curiously gave him the impression of being somewhat regal. His brain wanted to compare her posture to that of his mothers, but his attention was focused on her face.

Something in him pulled as he drank in the sight of her.

An eternity and a heartbeat passed, and his eyes burned. Ben's chest rose with a sharp inhale after a moment, and he hadn't realized until then that he'd been staring. Warm heat spread over his skin as he cursed himself. She was _gorgeous,_ yes, but he was nearly a Jedi and wasn't supposed to be struck dumb by passing beauties.

Ben rolled his shoulders and hardened his features, trying to save face and reclaim a little dignity by frowning at her. “You shouldn't be here,” he started firmly.

The girl looked positively stricken by his words. He cleared his throat and raised a hand in a placating manner. He tried again, a bit softer this time, “the temple is closed after sundown. You can come back tomorrow.”

“Oh,” she more breathed the word than said it, and visibly relaxed. “I wasn't aware, I'm sorry.”

Ben's lips pressed into a thin line. He noticed that she didn't move, and instead turned her eyes down, again looking at the mural near their feet. He shifted his weight, deciding that he could wait a few more minutes before he ran her off.

“What are you doing?” His voice came softer than he expected, and she looked up at him curiously.

“I'm admiring the art,” she said at last. “I've only seen something like this once before, though it was a bit different and much older.” He didn't sense any lie from her, but wasn't probing, either. He watched as she turned her eyes back down to the floor. He didn't have to look to know what it was.

“It's the Prime Jedi. The first Jedi.” He offered after a moment.

She hummed thoughtfully. “I thought it might have been something like that.”

Ben squinted his eyes at her, and stood up straighter before he lost his balance and fell sideways. “What did you say your name was?”

“I didn't,” the girl said cheekily, her voice nearly singing in amusement. “You didn't say your name, either.”

He huffed and looked away. “Ben,” he said, embarrassment creeping its way through his gut and spreading hotly over his neck. “My name is Ben.”

“ _Ben_.” There was something about the way she said it that made his skin ripple in a shiver. His attention was drawn to her again, and he watched as her eyes closed and her lips stretched into a thoughtful sort of smile. Her head tilted to the side and before Ben could really help it, he picked up on a wave of emotion from her. Something like grief, longing and hope. It was a strange, amorphous mixture that he couldn't make any sense of before it was immediately gone.

No, not gone. _Shut away._

Ben's nearly choked on his own tongue when the realization hit him. She was force-sensitive.

The girl’s eyes were bright as she looked at him. “I'm Rey.”

He stared at her dumbly. “You're the new student.”

She scrunched her nose and turned her head in a way that he couldn't help but think was cute. “Maybe,” she said at last. “Master Skywalker hasn't met with me yet. He hasn't decided anything.”

“You're a lot older than what he normally starts training at,” Ben mused, lip quirking when her brow furrowed in offense.

“I'm twenty!” She argued.

"So am I," Ben shrugged. “I was _ten_ when he officially took me as his apprentice.” He watched her blink in surprise, and offered a rueful smile as he turned towards the main doors of the temple. “Come on, I'll walk you out.”

“You've been his student for that long?” she asked curiously. There was a hint of disbelief in her voice, too.

He nodded as they started towards the exit, walking slowly as they talked. “Yes, all of the other students, too.”

“None of you have,” she looked to be reaching for a word, and eventually seemed to settle on one that was close enough to what she was asking “ _graduated_?”

Ben looked amused. “It's another two years before our trials. If we pass, we'll become fully recognized Jedi.”

She let out a breath and sounded either amazed or terrified. “Is there really so much to learn that it takes _twelve years?”_

Ben shrugged. “Well, it's not all Jedi related. We're expected to learn reading and writing, numbers, galactic history, alien and core system governmental diplomacy,” he waved his hand in the air as he rattled off their other classes. “The martial arts also take years to fully master. Then there are the different lightsaber forms and...” he paused, looking at her face. Rey looked lost in thought and far away. She was a bit mysterious, he decided, and found himself wanting to know what she was thinking.

“I didn't realize there was so much.” Rey said after a moment, quietly. Her mouth had turned down into the barest frown.

“It seems like a lot, but it’s not any worse than any other boarding school, I think." He offered. Rey looked up at him briefly, and he felt a flash of surprise pulse off of her. It faded away as soon as it came and she went back to being strangely muted again.

Ben wondered if Rey had some training with mental defenses, because she was more hidden away than anyone he'd ever met. His uncle said she learned what she knew from instinct, and he hated to think of what situations she'd been put in to have to figure out how to guard her mind and emotions like she did. _Everyone_ projected, even Master Luke. He found himself impressed with her innate control.

" _'Boarding school'?_ " Rey repeated, eyebrow piqued.

Ben lifted his free hand and gestured around the temple. "Welcome to _Luke Skywalker's Academy of Mystic Misfits_."

Rey let out a huff of breath, eyes wide. "Was that a _joke_?"

Ben cleared his throat and ran a hand through his hair. "Not my best, seems like." He shuffled ahead of her and refused to pay any attention to the blush burning his ears.

"Wait," she said suddenly, and reached out to catch his sleeved bicep.

And Ben, for the _life of him_ , couldn't explain the sudden sensation that poured through her touch and straight into his center. Maybe it was the alcoholic nectar running through his system, maybe it was the charming strangeness of the entire encounter, or maybe it was just some hiccup in the Force, but Ben became suddenly _very_ aware of Rey's presence.

It was bright and oddly...familiar. He felt like he should know her, that he was _supposed_ to know her, and wondered briefly at the way the light seemed to breathe out of her. It was as though she were a human vergence. He'd never heard of such a thing, never even considered the idea of it before--but he'd never been able to so _completely_ feel someone else's signature, either.

It was beautiful. Enrapturing. Incandescent.

It hit him.

The dream. The light.

His eyes widened.

_It’s you._

Something flashed in her eyes and his half-drunk brain wondered if she heard him.

If she did, she didn’t say anything other than “thank you,” and smiled as she quickly let him go. 

Ben nodded after a beat, and moved to open the heavy doors. She passed through the threshold and into the humid night air alone, giving him a brief smile. “It was nice to meet you, Ben. I enjoyed our talk.”

“Yeah, me too.” He swallowed thickly, and leaned his weight onto the door a bit. His skin burned where she touched him. The corners of his mouth lifted up into a smile before he realized it, and he felt a bit of embarrassment wash over him as he mumbled “goodnight” but also found that he didn't entirely care if he looked like an idiot.

She looked surprised, and he couldn't help but feel a bit more confident when he realized that the growing rosy dusting across her face was a blush. She seemed transfixed on his mouth for a moment and then brought her hazel gaze up to his eyes. They darted back and forth quickly, almost looking for something. She must have found it, because suddenly she was the one smiling. It was bright, full and happy and made her eyes close a bit, but shine like nebulae under the light of the gas giant in the sky.

He wasn't prepared for it. Wasn't prepared for the way it lit up her face, and seemed to make the air itself pulse and thicken between them.

It took his breath away.

“Goodnight, Ben.” Rey said pleasantly, and turned again towards the open night, skipping down the steps and almost running towards the pilgrim encampment.

Ben watched her go, frozen in his spot at the doorway to the temple. His heart was hammering in his chest.

He shook his head once, trying to focus on himself and what he was doing. “Force, help me,” he prayed quietly, adjusting the cups and bowls in his hand. That's right, he had to get to the kitchens. He closed the temple doors once more and stood behind them for a moment, feet suddenly as heavy as durasteel.

“Rey...” he tested the name out loud, whisper-quiet as though he were sharing a secret into the empty temple.

His thoughts trailed back to what his uncle and Lor San Tekka had said about her. Powerful. Curious. Led by instinct.

A sudden bolt of excitement ran through him. He wanted to see what she was capable of. He wanted to see what kind of power she had beyond an arresting presence and crippling beauty. He wanted to know what she was going to say to his uncle. He wanted to know her past and why she had come to the temple and why he thinks he's dreamed of meeting her.

He wanted to know why he felt so connected to her, a perfect stranger.

Ben frowned, and reality came back to him like ice-water being thrown on his back.

He would never know any of those things if his uncle decided to turn her away.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey finds a new side of Jakku that she never realized existed and makes a few friends.

Rey became aware of herself slowly.

Her mind was detached and lagged to calculate anything—running diagnostics like a droid coming out of low-power mode.

Her senses activated one by one. Touch came first with the feel of hot, dry air and warm sand grating against her skin. Rey pulled herself to a sit, shimmying herself and inch or so into the sand. The sun beat down on it mercilessly and made the surface of it burning hot to the touch, while just under it was only warm and more tolerable.

Sound came next, with that of her breathing and the ruffle of her clothes as a lazy wind gusted past. She could taste and smell the dirt in her mouth and nose and coughed to try to clear it.

Rey opened her eyes, taking in the rolling golden ocean ahead of her. A mirage stretched out to the distant horizon in every direction, reflecting the heat and light and bleeding up towards the clear, cloudless blue atmosphere above. The sight, although she hadn’t seen it in just over a year, was a familiar one.

Jakku.

Rey fell back onto her wrists, watching in shocked detachment as the sand and dust poured off of her like water. There was a creeping horror building as her fingers dug into the sand, her skin feeling the bite of the grains. Her mind tried to process what it could possibly mean that she was here. Now. Alone. What it could mean that only just a moment ago she had been facing her grandfather, that she had reached a balance and had felt all of the Jedi before her, flowing through her—and she was now here, on Jakku, half buried in the middle of the desert? What did it mean that she was alone? Where was the Emperor? The Sith eternal? The Resistance?

A pain dug through her heart, sharp and deep, like a knife.

Where was Ben?

Rey stood slowly, eyes cast down unseeingly into the sand.

She was looking in towards herself, feeling the force. Feeling for that line that ran from the core of her and out to him. It was difficult. The force was flowing strangely around her and as she called it to her, to give her guidance, to give her truth. What came back wasn’t... _muted_ , exactly, but dull. It took more effort to connect to it than it ever had before. It was a strange feeling, and Rey could only hope that it was because of her disorientation and chaotic emotions.

Rey breathed and tried to relax. She shook her hands and closed her eyes, making an effort to center herself. She focused inward. Focused on her connection to the force and not what she could read from it, where her heart and her power mingled into the same thing.

Where that golden thread of the bond began.

Rey tried to swallow down a roiling mess of emotions creeping over her as she reached for it, but couldn't sense the connection she had to him. Their bond wasn't as it should be. Her line was there, and it— _stretched_ . There was _something_.

Her eyes opened slowly, and her head craned just a bit towards the left of her.

...but it wasn't _him_.

Tears pooled to her eyes suddenly and a feeling of—grief?—flooded through her so fiercely that she wasn't able to stop herself from shuddering into the open air. She didn't feel Ben, she didn't feel _anyone_. Only herself, and only the unforgiving heat of the Jakku desert.

"What happened?" she asked herself, looking at her booted feet as they sat neatly on top the sand, unnaturally unmoved by her weight.

She narrowed her eyes and tried to remember.

Palpatine's laugh. Ben's death. The ache of the bond being severed. Then— 

_"I can find him, Finn. I can bring him back."_

_Her friend looked at her in frustrated exhaustion. "How?"_

_She grinned triumphantly and showed him the ancient Jedi text. Circular diagrams were drawn on it's pages of portals. "There's a place. A world between the worlds. If I can go there, if I can find the right door—"_

Another memory—

_She'd meditated for days. No food, no water, just pure focus. She reached out to both aspects of the Force, the living and the cosmic, and tried to channel them at once. It was like trying to shove two ends of a magnet together, they resisted her efforts and fought to push the other away._

_But eventually, through fluke and accident, she got it to click._

_There had been darkness, yes. And doors. She remembered pouring all of her focus into the frayed ends of her severed bond. She willed it to stretch and reach for what she wanted—for him._

_And it reacted._

Rey opened her eyes and she looked again to the empty desert around her. She couldn't remember anything else. She hissed in frustration.

"It must have worked…" she murmured to herself, hoping it was true.

_Tug._

A gasp escaped her lips, brow furrowing as she felt the line pulling from within her. The one that didn't go to Ben. It pulled her from her turmoil almost as soon as it had set in. It grounded her.

_Tug._

Rey lifted a hand and wiped a tear away from her face, focusing on the thin, humming connection coming for her and stretching out into the desert. She focused on what she felt from it, trying to grasp what or who could possibly be on the other end.

She couldn't place it, exactly, but.

It was familiar.

_Tug._

Rey balled her hands into fists. Not angrily, but in determination. She wasn't going to find any answers to her questions just standing still. Whatever was on the other end of the line didn't feel malevolent, but it was calling her.

And so she walked.

She walked for hours. Days, maybe. Over dunes and sinking fields. There was something wrong with her body—it was light, and she thought she glided over the sands like a ghost. There were no footprints behind her. There was no way to see which direction she'd come from, only the little string in the Force pulling her forward.

Every single part of her knew on some level where she was being led. The dunes slithered slowly over the planet like snakes pushed by the wind. The destroyers half-buried in the sand, half-obscured by distance and the atmosphere of the world were definitely missing from the scenery, but Rey knew this was Jakku, and she knew well before her feet finally stopped in front of her old AT-AT that she was being led ‘home’. 

The tugging was stronger now than ever. It felt like something was inside the overturned Hellhound II unit, a snarling animal at the end of the connection, leashed and viciously trying to simultaneously get loose and pull her in. There was an overwhelming sense of urgency in the Force. It wanted her to go inside. It was desperate for her to go inside, and she was reacting to it on a primal level. She wanted to, she wanted to see what the Force wanted to show her.

But she didn’t move.

The effort it took to keep her feet still outside the shelter was titanic and spoke volumes of Rey’s rage and hurt.

“How dare you,” she whispered into the wind, into the Force. “I never wanted to come back here. _How dare you._ ”

That gentle, lazy breeze returned again, silently dragging across her body, guiding her forward.

“No,” she hissed, indignant hostility making her turn her heel in an act of pure defiance. She would walk all the way to the ruins of Niima outpost and scavenge for a portion buried in the sand rather than step foot inside that—that _place_ again.

Then the fierce, wild tugging stopped. The sudden release nearly threw Rey, and she stumbled forward into the sand—her feet landing more solidly in the sand than they had been. They still weren’t sinking the way they should be, and the haze that was wrapped the edges of her half-muted senses still picked up on the nearly imperceivable, quiet rustling of fabric. She still caught the soft gasp, and the pained whine that followed. 

It wasn’t her making those sounds. It was whatever had taken up residence inside her home since she had last visited.

Rey didn’t hold any sort of grudge to whoever had scavenged the shelter. It wasn’t her home. It had never been her home. Home was, when she was younger, wherever she imagined her parents were. A distant and beautiful planet that was green and flowing with water and as impossibly perfect as it was imagined by a desperate child’s lonely mind. The shelter was where she slept and hid from the worst weather and predators that would do her harm, be them wild animals or other scavengers.

Rey had come across it when she had finally escaped Unkarr two years after she had been sold to him—and it was already hollowed out into a bare-bones living quarters. There had been a hammock already tied up in the corner, and other evidence of past inhabitants that she had shamelessly scavenged and used and sold to aid her own desperate survival. She knew that the overturned battle walker would continue to act as a shelter for other desperate survivalists seeking refuge in Jakku’s unforgiving sands long after she had either been reunited with her parents or—more likely—grown old and feeble until Riia swallowed her into her quiet hold.

 _See?_ A spiteful part of her wanted to hiss into the Force. _There is nothing for me here. Better to leave it to who needs it._

Rey set her jaw defiantly, every inch of her wanting to continue to walk away—but remained rooted.

She could hear another, quieter whimper coming from inside the not-home.

It sounded young. It bothered her.

 _Tug_.

“Fine,” she snarled, and in three wide, angry steps, was at the draping canvas that acted as a doorway. Rey shoved it aside angrily. Her eyes wanted to rake over every inch of the durasteel box she had grown up in, looking for any minute difference it had undergone in the last year. Her heart was both pained and relieved to see it appear to be mostly the same.

To her left peripheral, there was a shift in the shadows. Her eyes immediately turned towards it, a small, child-sized bundle of threadbare sheets balled up and trembling over a patchy pallet not unlike the one Rey had used when she didn’t feel like sleeping in a sling made more of knots than ropes.

“Hello?” Rey called out, her voice softening just slightly. The bundle gasped and shifted, and Rey felt a sudden projection of emotion and thoughts, completely unfiltered as the new inhabitant jolted into consciousness. “I’m sorry to wake you, I—”

Whatever Rey had been about to say died on her lips when the child sat up, and the thin sheet fell away.

Familiar hazel eyes. Three small brown buns, messy and sweat-soaked. Pale, freckled skin that was trembling uncontrollably. The child’s face was flushed from fever, and gaunt from dehydration and hunger. Rey knew that face.

It was hers.

The child’s eyes raked over her, brightening with each passing second as Rey stared in growing, muted horror. Excitement flashed and washed over her. Relief, hope and joy swirled thickly in the air, almost a physical thing as it radiated off of the little girl in waves.

Then, devastatingly, “Mama?”

Rey struggled to remember how to breathe. She inhaled sharply. “No,” she said delicately, aching for the child when all of the light she had been projecting seemed to fade sharply. The apology Rey offered to the girl sounded weak even to her.

“You look like me,” the child said sadly, her eyes dulling as she laid back down. Her body was trembling with shivers.

Rey began to worry for the state of the child—and looked around the room for something—anything that might be able to help ease her illness. Water would have been a good start, but as Rey looked, her eyes finally landed on the wall she had been stubbornly ignoring—and she paused.

When Rey had left, the wall had been nearly covered top to bottom in the little inch-long markers that were proof that she had survived Jakku for another day.

The wall she was looking at now didn’t boast even half of the markers she had left. A quarter, maybe.

Memories came to her, then. Of when she was ten. She had slipped while climbing in a destroyer and a rusted end of twisted framing had cut her leg. She’d had fevers and weakness for nearly a week. Infection festered and she had worried that a rot would set in. She may have ended up losing the leg if she hadn’t drug herself to Niima and put herself in debt for the next three years, earning half-portions on all her trades. A year for every expired bacta patch he loaned her.

Her leg healed. She took extra care to never slip again, and eventually her debt was over.

That was ten years in the past to Rey, but the painful present to the child. That much was obvious.

“I am you,” she said after a moment, her voice sounding dry and distant. "Just grown."

The child stared at her for a long minute, before blinking slowly, and pulling her sheet back over her shoulders. “I miss Papa,” she declared suddenly.

“I know.”

“Are they ever coming back?” Little-Rey asked quietly, the edge of hope returning to her voice.

Rey felt cruel as she shook her head in the negative, and offered another useless apology. “No, I’m sorry.”

The hope mutated then into a hot flash of anger, but it fizzled out almost as soon as it came, and sank into a deep sadness. “Why?” She whispered, her breath hitching over the words. Her eyes became red and moist, but tears refused to fall—more likely from dehydration than any show of pride. “Was I bad?”

“ _No._ ” Rey sank to her knees and scrambled towards the child, suddenly desperate to make her understand. “Someone else was bad. Our—our grandfather is an _evil_ man. Our parents hid us here so he couldn't find us. So he couldn't hurt us.”

Rey’s hand reached out, her hand resting against the quickly reddening face of her younger self. Her skin was terribly hot, she desperately needed help—and before Rey even realized it, she was offering the Force her life energy to heal the girl. She could feel it flowing through and between them, mixing curiously—but not helpfully. The girl’s skin didn’t cool and she could still sense the infection inside the girl’s blood. She couldn’t heal her.

The child’s body began to heave with sobs and it took everything Rey had not to dissolve into a crying mess along with her.

“...but he found our parents. He hurt them.” She continued, gliding her thumb along the dusting of freckles along the girl’s thin cheeks. 

Rey wondered if she had died in the World Between Worlds, or was about to. She had heard jokes amongst those in the resistance, people saying their lives flashed before their eyes when faced with imminent death or the threat of it. She wondered if that was what was happening now, in a sense.

Death and Life and Time were all aspects of the Force, and if she passed, she would become one with it, if the legends were true. It wasn’t impossible, she mused, to somehow come to herself as a sort of displaced vision.

Or maybe she had found the right door after all, and this is all she could do. Maybe the Force was offering her a strange sort of chance to pass a message to herself. To give her a chance to life her life instead of wasting it waiting.

The first step to that, she realized with guilt, would be to have the girl acknowledge the hard, painful truth. A truth she had always known in the deepest corner of her heart, a truth she refused more fiercely as time passed to acknowledge because if she did—it meant her suffering and waiting had been for nothing.

It meant that her holding onto hope had faith had been naive stupidity just as everyone had said all along, be it with harsh words or worse, pitying looks.

Maybe if she faced the pain of the truth now, she could mourn it and move on. She could focus on getting off of this hellish waste of a planet and find somewhere Green. Somewhere where people were kind and rain came in gentle, cool sprinkles. Maybe she would find Leia and the Resistance. Maybe she would meet Ben again in this life, and fate would be kinder to them.

It was all a lot of _maybes_.

Her voice nearly broke as she spoke, “... they aren't coming back.”

Tears did fall then, quietly from both of them.

“Can I go with you?” Little-Rey asked hopelessly.

Grown-Rey gently slid her fingers along her younger-self’s hairline, tucking a dirty, sweat-crusted curl behind her ear. “I don’t know if that’s possible,” she lamented.

The girl’s shoulders shook then, grief returning anew. “Please? I don't want to be here anymore.”

And before Rey could say anything more, the little girl reached her hand up, wrapping thin, small fingers around her own larger hand, and squeezed. The Force seemed to pulse then—and before Rey fully registered what happened, the girl vanished—a pile of dirty clothes falling limply into the pallet.

Rey stared dumbly, her hand tingling where the child had touched her last. There was an echo of something there, spreading through her like warm whisky. It seemed to settle, and then fade, and as it did—the dullness over her senses lifted. The full depth of reality came rushing back to her—and she sank into the sand as though her body became fully corporeal, and weight returned to her.

The pull she had felt in the force, the tug, stopped. Now it only hummed in contentment.

Rey sat quietly, her brain circuitry fried and unable to compute the reality of what was happening.

* * *

The next day, after spending the entire previous evening, night and that morning in various stages of denial, panic and ultimately furious resignation, Rey had been forced to leave the miserable comfort of her once-again shelter and find water.

Niima Outpost was just as she had always known it. A scattered few vendor stands shaded by permanently pitched linen tarps, billowing slightly in the gentle morning breeze. The Concession Stand sat squarely in the middle, odd jobs posted on one of its walls with Unkar Plutts trading window locked down tightly. Rey sniffed at the sight, happy at least that she wasn't made to suffer the sight of her former master so early in the day, before she had time to scout the area and attempt to formulate some plan of action for moving forward.

Frustration needled her when a pass by the eastern lot revealed that the Falcon was not there. If memory served, the 'garbage freighter' that she'd never paid mind to wouldn't come to Jakku for another few years, at least. Rey might have been a teenager when it was parked behind Unkar's stand, she wasn't sure.

What she could plainly see was that it wasn't there now. Not even the quadjumper Plutt's men used to import supplies was there.

Rey gripped her staff, a familiar comfort found amongst her younger self's belongings.

Supply runs didn't usually last longer than a few days. It wouldn't be trouble using the Force to convince Unkar to give her portions and water to hold her over until she could steal a ship, but the attention it would attract could be even more dangerous than potentially going hungry and thirsty.

“Hello.”

Rey was pulled from her worries by a gentle voice, rich with the same imperial accent she had. Turning around, she saw an old man dressed in the thicker-spun clothes that the northern traders wore. The colors of the coat were a richer dark brown than the sand-colored rags the scavengers that frequented Niima dressed in, even his tunic was dyed a deep, rich Tuanulberry blue.

He seemed to be respected or important, draped as he was in beaded jewelry and nice leather accessories. A well-crafted knife was tucked into his belt. The man was old and even though she didn't recognize him, he had kind eyes.

“Hello,” she repeated to him guardedly.

“I don't think I've seen you before.” The man said with a smile. “Are you just passing through?”

“I thought I was.” She huffed honestly. “I'm not sure anymore.”

“Ah,” he said with a nod, a smile teasing his face. His beard and hair were trimmed neatly. He looked out-of-place for someone who lived on Jakku, even if he wore native clothes. “There are many crossroads we face in life. To go down one path, or to choose another. In the end, the Force takes us where we all belong.”

Her heart skipped a beat. She turned fully towards him. “The Force?”

“It is what connects us all. What gives us hope.” The man said, his smile stretching his face and crinkled his eyes. “Do you feel it?”

“Yes.” Rey nodded.

“Ah, so you _are_ chosen.” The man said, as though confirming a suspicion. He held his arm out to his side, and Rey's eyes turned to see a small group of similarly dressed northerners unloading crates from a flatbed transport. She saw clay pottery, jugs of sealed wine and dyes. Glasswares, even some meat.

She had remembered seeing such things in the stands thought her life on Jakku, she'd never been able to justify trading hard-earned portions for things she had, until her enlightening stint with the Resistance, considered completely frivolous. “You are welcome to come to Tuanul with us. We have food and shelter for weary travelers, and perhaps can give you a bit of guidance before you walk your path.”

Rey cocked her head a bit, regarding the strange, kind man in confused wonderment. “Who are you?” She asked at last.

He started, and then laughed heartily. “Forgive me, age is taking my manners, it seems! I am Lor San Tekka.”

The name sounded somewhat familiar. "Are you their leader?" Rey asked, nodding her head towards the few people unloading their trade goods.

"Of sorts," he confessed, "we are more a congregation than a village. I am their _spiritual_ leader. We are all devoted children of the Force."

"Oh," Rey blinked, not sure how to react to that. She had been told, more than once by Leia over their year training, that the Jedi Order was only one of many religions centered around the Force. The Sith religion that Palpatine followed was another, and then there was The Church of the Force.

Realization hit her like a slap to the face. This was the man that Poe had come to meet, the one who had the map portion that led to Luke. When Ben—no, _Kylo_ —comes for him, it'll be the start of everything. Finn will defect from the First Order, she'll find BB-8, they'll escape on the Falcon and then— 

No. No, that's what happened before. What was _supposed_ to happen.

Except Rey is different, now. She's older, she knows things that haven't come to pass yet, about threats beyond Snoke and the First Order—and was _not_ going to stay on Jakku even one second longer than she absolutely had to, consequences be damned. She’ll find Leia on her own and tell the General where Ahch-To is, and rescue Finn herself from the First Order.

She’ll find Ben, wherever in the galaxy he could possibly be, she’ll find him and save him from Snoke. From her grandfather. She’ll kill the Emperor again and again until the universe is satisfied if it meant keeping Ben safe.

“What is your name, child?” Lor San Tekka asked after a moment, studying her.

She took a breath, once again pulled from her thoughts. She offered her hand to the older man smiling when he reached out and shook it. “I’m Rey.”

* * *

Rey learned that the old man was extremely well respected by his people.

He had been very warm to her when he’d introduced himself, but the people he traveled with seemed a little more hesitant to speak to her while they spent their day at Niima, selling their goods. One of the older merchants—an alien with spotted, plaqued skin in particular kept all three of his eyes on her. She could sense that he wasn’t hostile, but more weary—especially when Unkar Plutt had come over and made a great show of inspecting their goods.

The Corlute had openly stared at her for a long while, squinting his beady eyes at her. No doubt he was trying to place her face and not able to make the connection that the young woman in front of him was the ten-year-old he’d been shortchanging for parts for the last four years.

Between her surly glare and his attraction for a good deal, Unkar turned away from her and haggled them fifty portions for all of their wine and a bolt of sandworm leather, and then another five for a crate full of glasswares, cloth and dried meat. He took everything that was of any sort of real value, things he could monopolize on and sell for triple the price he paid after the Northerners left for another two weeks.

Most of the scavengers would come well after midday, bringing their hauls, trading Unkar for portions and then if they had a protein cube to spare, they might trade for a clay pot or a yard of cloth—nothing unnecessary. Rey wasn’t surprised when none of the jewelry or more expensive blue linen had been sold.

She stayed the day with the group, keeping a wary eye on Plutt and his goons, hoping a ship would land in the lot and she might have been able to spend her evening hijacking a way off planet instead of making the long journey North to Tuanul. She wasn’t so lucky.

Later, when the sun was beginning to set, and the scavengers had stopped coming for the day, the group began to pack up. Almost all of their wares had been sold, so it wasn’t actually much effort to load the crates back onto their transport, but she had grown impatient standing and waiting all day, only given a small amount of dried meat and a single cup of water to hold her over. The merchants were wary of her and were even less inclined to share their supplies to a stranger who hadn’t really done anything to earn it, except charm their leader.

That quickly changed when she reached a hand out, and all the crates they had readied to be loaded rose silently, steadily floating to their places on the transport.

Shock erupted from all of them, then fascination and curiosity. Where they had been stand-offish during the day and understandably mistrusting of her—the long, ten-hour drive North was full of overwhelming chatter and endless questions that she politely avoided answering in much detail. Their excitement was infectious, and—she could feel empathically through the Force—so genuinely fond that she forgave them for their borderline rude behavior of the day. The three-eyed alien who had been watching her, especially. 

When the chatter died down and the others began to fade to sleep, the triclops took point at the top of a stack of crates, blaster rifle ready in his lap for any raiders that might try to attack as they traveled through the dark night. Rey had already understood that he was the muscle of the group—their protector while they traveled—and had given her an entire portion to eat and a canteen of water as an apology. Rey listened as he admitted that he had also been a scavenger in service to Plutt when he was younger, and was just a bit overprotective of the man who had pulled him out of that dead-end life.

Rey understood the loyalty. Han had offered her a real job. If things had gone differently in another life, she absolutely knew that she would have been fiercely loyal to the first person who had seen something of value in her. She would have shadowed Han to the point of absurdity and made it her business to glare at any random suspicious people that might have had a mind to take advantage of the legendary smuggler.

She glanced at the old man again, he was wrapped tightly in a blue blanket, a simple pattern stitched into it’s hems. His eyes were closed but she knew he was awake. Waiting, probably. “You have questions,” Rey muttered, setting her new cantin down beside her.

Lor San Tekka hummed lazily. “I do,” he admitted, “but I can feel you aren't yet ready to answer them.”

She was somewhat stunned by that. “Thank you.”

“You're welcome,” he said lightly. A comfortable silence passed for a while longer. Rey realized that they were the only ones left awake other than their three-eyed guard. “They must seem a bit fickle to you, don’t take it to heart. We are worshipers of The Church of the Force and you are the first Chosen that they have ever seen ‘in the wild’, so to speak.”

“The way you keep saying _‘chosen’_ ,” Rey started, worrying at a frayed hem of the long linen draping she’d scavenged from her disappeared younger self’s belongings. “Do you mean force sensitives? Like Jedi?”

“Yes and no,” San Tekka chuckled tiredly, “Jedi have their own branch of beliefs and take a more...active approach to their devotions.”

“None of you are force-sensitive?” Rey asked curiously, glancing around again at all of the sleeping traders. “I take it that's what you mean when you say 'chosen'. Why worship it if you can't feel it?”

Lor San Tekka tucked his arms into his sleeves. The desert temperatures always dropped rapidly after the heat of the sun went away. “We live simple lives. We try to live in the light, and keep a balance with ourselves and with nature. It's peaceful—a feat in and of itself on a planet like this,” he told her with a certain pride in his voice, like a parent bragging about the good deeds of his children. “We may not have power as you do, but we have guidance and purpose, and we feel the Force with our faith.”

She nodded, but something had been bothering her since that morning. “How could you tell I was _'chosen'_?”

“One could say I have a nose for it.” San Tekka grinned, lifting his hand to tap it. He lowered his hands to play with the strange necklace he wore. It was an odd, but interesting mix of silver chaining, beads and larger jagged stones. It looked probably older than him. Eventually, he dropped his hand and once again tucked it into his sleeves. “Truthfully, I've met many, _many_ chosen in my life. Even a Jedi or two.”

Rey was silent for a moment, and a thought came to her. “Did you know Luke Skywalker?”

“I know him well.” San Tekka smiled, his crinkled eyes twinkling in the moonlight. “We travel to his temple twice a year, and offer devotion to the Force. You are welcome to come with us when we leave next.”

Rey was utterly shocked. Temple? _The_ temple? Where he trained his students?

Where he trained Ben?

It still stood?

Suddenly, Rey’s mind was moving as furiously as a sandstorm. She licked her lips and ignored the slight waver in her voice as she asked, “when will that be?”

He must have picked up on her chaotic emotions, because the old man had let out a pulse of worried curiosity for her. “A few weeks,” he answered after a beat. “I suspect,” he said, inclining his head meaningfully towards her, “just long enough for you to decide which path you'd like to travel on your crossroad.”

Rey lowered her eyes to her hands in her lap. The hem of the draping was still held between her fingers, now trembling. She leaned back against the railing edge of the hover transport and consciously smoothed her palms against the pale fabric of her pants. 

Lor San Tekka reached his hand out. He offered her a full canteen of water. “Here, have your fill.”

She took it after a stunned moment, and took a deep drink. The water did help her nerves, and she was grateful as she handed it back to him, still half-full. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome.”

It was another hour at least before she managed to calm her mind enough to sleep.

  
  


* * *

Rey had lived on Jakku for fourteen years, and never once did she visit Tuanul.

It was an eight hour trip one-way by speeder to unfamiliar territory, which meant she would have needed to save up water, portions and fuel to more or less make a trip that served no other purpose than to satisfy her curiosity, and hope she wasn't attacked by bandits or monsters while she went. Rey of the past had also been worried to stray too far away from Niima, also, just in case her parents came looking for her.

She’d heard stories, of course, of the northerners who didn’t have to scavenge for food. The Teedos and most everyone else that lived on Jakku believed that the goddess Riia lived inside the sands of the desert and would show her wrath with storms.

The Teedos had spoken once, too, about people who had been granted Riia’s favor and were given food from the sand itself. Rey had shrugged off the notion the first time she'd heard it, thinking it was a bad joke. If anything grew on Jakku it _must_ have been by divine intervention.

Academically, Rey understood the concept of farming, she just couldn’t comprehend that anyone could manage to do it on Jakku. Her child’s mind had conjured the image of someone throwing water into the dirt and a full portion emerging from the mud afterwards when she’d first learned of it. It wasn't until the Resistance had settled on Ajan Kloss that she’d actually seen fresh fruits and berries ripen on the thick jungle fauna, and wished that there were more Neera trees in the galaxy that she really understood the concept. 

When they’d arrived and she helped unload the transporter, she looked around curiously. It looked like a proper village, with homes and a road. There seemed to be less sand, too, with more solid ground beneath their feet. Rey hadn’t really had a chance to get a good look before she was swarmed by the rest of the villagers, some even bowing to her the news got out that she was able to use the Force.

A whirlwind welcoming left her head spinning, and when a young girl offered her a simple small-beaded necklace, she couldn’t help but be reminded of Pasaana.

She was grateful when Lor San Tekka offered her shelter away from the crowd, and invited her to his home. It was barely twice as large as the hut she had inhabited on Ahch-To, but it was full of a lifetime worth of trinkets and memories. There was a heady sense of peace that washed over her as soon as she stepped inside, and a warmth that wasn’t from desert heat or firelight.

The Force was balanced here, in this small home. Respected and settled. She’d never felt anything like it.

Rey talked a little more with Lor San Tekka, but was unable to keep the smile off of her face as a woman and her two children came and collected her. A fire had been lit in the center of the village, and another man had brought a large clay pot of stew. The woman had sat Rey on a carved stone, made flat to be one of many seats surrounding the fire. Another villager came shortly after, a burly alien with arms the size of trees carrying a heavy pot full of water. There was no rush as people made their way over and filled their canteens. There must have been a vaporator somewhere nearby, she realized.

A boy came to her, eagerly smiling as he handed her a bowl of food before running off. Another woman with lots of beads around her neck came shortly after, speaking a language she didn’t quite understand and offering her a cup of thick, sweet smelling liquid. She knew it was an alcoholic nectar that they often traded to Unkar, but had never had any herself. She stuttered a thanks to the woman, politely sipping.

It burned, but tasted good.

“You look about my daughter’s size,” an older twi’lek woman with terracotta colored skin said to her, “I’ll bring you some of her clothes. This is all you own?” The woman tsked as she gestured towards Rey’s outfit. Her clothes were simple and functional, not unlike what she wore on the _Supremacy_ when she went to Ben a year ago—a decade from now.

The coloring was paler and the stitching finer, but her arms and neck were bare, and even with the draping she'd taken from her younger self to shawl her arms and head from the burning sun, it wasn't entirely desert appropriate.

“Yes," she admitted, "I would appreciate that, thanks.” Rey didn't like it, but practicality outweighed her guilt of being given free things for no other reason than being able to lift a few rocks.

“How do you all live here?” she asked the group later that night, belly long full and warm from food and nectar. “Without scavenging, I mean.”

“We farm. We hunt. We trade. The Force provides for us.” A young human man near her age said eagerly. His sleeping toddler was drooling on his shoulder and he didn’t look bothered in the slightest. “Hemevu blows glass. Caala there,” he gestured towards another twi’lek woman with green skin marred by dozens of scratches both healed and healing, “breeds sand birds for food and feathers. They are very good at finding lizards and snakes before they have a chance to bite any of the children.”

His wife smiled at Rey, shyly. “The Goazon caves to the East are infested with nightcrawler worms, but are moist from their secretions. Nightbloomer flowers and berry bushes flourish there. From them we make wine, dyes, preserves and feed the animals with the leftovers. We take the shed skin of the worms and make baskets, clothes and shelters.”

“I never knew that Jakku had so much...life?” she murmured, equal parts wonder and shame in her voice. She wished she had come here when she was younger. “I've only known scavenging.”

Lor San Tekka patted a hand on her shoulder as he walked past. “Jakku can be a desolate, harsh world. To those forced to serve under others, always looking out for themselves because nobody else will—I expect our little community may feel jarring.”

“A little.” she admitted, and smiled. “It's a nice sort of jarring.”

* * *

Rey had been offered a place to sleep with the sand bird breeder, who was eager to show her how she trained the animals to scout and hunt. She was extremely animated as she explained that the creatures were endlessly useful, with their eggs, feathers, meat and bones—as well as their intelligence.

When Rey tucked in to sleep on a feather-stuffed pallet and pillow later that night, she slept with the depth that could only come from comfort and alcohol-induced relaxation.

When she dreamed, it was of calm rain and Ben’s smile.

* * *

  
  


Rey was kind of impressed with herself that she waited until she had been in Tuanul for a week before she’d brought it up to Lor San Tekka.

They were sitting in his home enjoying a sort of tea made from dried berries and leaves. She had been more or less adopted by the village since her arrival, and had made a lot of friends, especially the three-eyed former scavenger, Graffon, and the kind old man who’d spoken to her first. “You said you travel to Luke Skywalker's temple?”

“Yes. He lives there with his students.” Graffon replied, fingering through a woven basket full of dried berry pits.

They were poisonous if eaten, but once smoothed and threaded made lovely beads. The suspicious, blaster-wielding former scavenger and protector of the village had a hobby of making delicate accessories that were beautiful and frivolous. 

Rey found it endearing and wore a bracelet he gave her fondly. "We don't speak to the Jedi or his students. We simply offer our support and worship to the temple. It is a holy place.” Graffon continued, finding a large pit and lifting it up to closer inspect in the light.

“Students?” Rey echoed pointedly.

San Tekka chuckled and added some sort of sweet syrup to the three cups of tea he was preparing. “Yes.”

Rey’s face didn’t betray the near desperation she felt inside. “You're _sure_?”

Graffon grunted an amused sound as he set the basket aside and dusted a bit of sand off his lap. “Yes.”

“What if I want to be a student?” Rey ventured airily to the room, ignoring him.

“You would have to speak to Luke.” Lor San Tekka said. He paused as if considering something. “You would have to be very convincing.”

Rey snorted. “I could convince him,” she declared, and took a sip of offered tea.

“Oh,” the old man laughed then, “of that, I've no doubt.”

Graffon snorted. "Pity the fool who tells you no."

* * *

After another week at the village, Rey sat beside the bonfire in the center of the village.

The trip to Yavin 4 was soon, and Tuanul was excited. Everyone had been packing, so to speak, gathering the best linens and leathers and stored foods. She offered to help every day and was always turned away, the villagers seeming extra intent to treat her like some kind of princess just because she was 'chosen'. The novelty wore off after day one, really, and the feeling of being _‘kept’_ left her _fiercely independent_ ego very frustrated and a little offended—even if she was fond of all her new Tuanul friends.

Graffon had made the trip back to Niima to arrange hired transport with Unkar. Apparently the poisonous berry pits he liked to make necklaces out of were only poisonous to humanoids, but insectoids found the bitter pits quite delicious as a seasoning in their food. Three sacks of pits, two cases of wine, an enormous container of pickled sand bird eggs and half a year's worth of glass and claywares later, Graffon commed before the end of the day to say he'd struck their usual bargain with the supplier Unkar hired to transport all his scavenger destroyer parts.

There had been a party—more a festival, really, since the entire village had come. They ate heartily, the Magshi twins had played music and all the children and their mothers danced around the fire.

They sang songs of the Force. They all prayed for safe travels and humble blessings.

Rey had been asked to dance more than once by the ten-year-old boy who had given her that bowl of stew her first night in the village. He had a little crush and she couldn't help but feel flattered and was happy to indulge him an extra dance.

Her time at the village was coming to an end and Rey wondered if the others sensed it. Perhaps the festival was to wish her safe travels as much as themselves.

Hours passed, and the bonfire had died more to embers. With nearly all of the others having gone back to their homes for the night, Only Lor San Tekka and herself remained seated on the smooth stone seats, enjoying the slight breeze in the air and each other’s company. A few stragglers milled about, collecting snoozing neighbors who had too much to drink.

There was a warm sense of calm everywhere. Of peace. She understood now why Tuanul was considered a holy village on Jakku, even to the likes of Ukar Plutt. The Force sang here, light and whole.

Somewhere in the time she's stayed at the little village, it had become her home. More than the hollowed-out war tank she had confined herself to for fourteen years had ever been.

She _hurt_ , knowing this village's fate, if she failed.

“You still have questions.” Rey said quietly, glancing towards the kindly elder who had brought her to this wonderful place.

Lor San Tekka nodded. Age made him a slow eater, and he was finishing his dinner. “I do.”

“I may not be ready to answer all of them,” she said truthfully, wrapping a beaded shawl tighter around her shoulders. She glanced nervously between him and the fire. “Maybe not even most of them.”

“That seems more than fair.” He said at last, a clay bowl half-full of roasted meat and tubers in his hands. “Where are you from, Rey?”

“Here. Jakku.” She said quickly. “I left for a while. I made some friends. I made some enemies.”

He chuckled, sounding almost _knowing_. “Fell in love?”

“Yes,” she admitted quietly. She took a deep, shaky breath before continuing. “He died for me. He saved my life and it cost him his.”

“It certainly sounds like he loved you, too.” Lor San Tekka said respectfully. He offered her a kind, empathetic smile. “I'm sorry for your loss.”

Rey wiped away the tears that welled up in her eyes. “Afterwards,” she said, retightening the shawl around her shoulders, “I tried to go on, you know? I had friends, they loved me, they knew I was hurting and so were they. We'd all lost a lot of loved ones...they tried to let me process on my own. Or maybe I didn't give them the chance to help, I don't know.”

Rey bowed her head, thinking of Finn, and how he exploded on her in hurt and betrayal after she’d returned from Tatooine, and she explained her real relationship with Ben to him. He'd calmed down after a while and explained that he had been worried for her, always worried, always wanting her to open up and trust him with what was bothering her. He wanted to be a good friend and wanted to be there for her—but she knew that after she told him everything, a part of him wished she hadn't.

She'd more or less drug him into her obsession with finding the World Between Worlds after that. He had spent months trying to get her to listen to reason, to go home, to give it up because Ben was _dead_ but he, Finn, was _right there_ , and she was _scaring him—_

—and she ignored him.

“It sounds like a terribly lonely time for you.”

“It was.” Because even if she had her best friend, Ben was gone, and it had hurt worse than dying.

“...and so you’ve come home to Jakku to start over?” Lor San Tekka asked, “or perhaps find a new perspective whilst surrounded by reminders of your old life?”

Rey wanted to smile. A new perspective of her homeworld was certainly an apt description of what she'd gained since she'd arrived. There was little doubt that she would look back on her time here and not think of it with affection. Once she left, she actually worried she might get a little homesick. The notion was funny in it's irony.

But Rey thought of how she felt when she found the passage in the texts. She thought of her strange encounter with her younger self half a month prior, and what it meant that she had been the one to walk out of the AT-AT and her younger self had not. “...to start over,” she said eventually.

It felt like the truth. It was terrifying to admit, but it felt like the truth.

“And you would let go of your friends, to the ties of those people who you say love you?” There was a certain edge in his voice, like he wanted a specific answer from her. 

She thought about his question. She thought about Finn. “Sometimes," Rey confessed, "I’m not sure if they really loved me, or if they loved the person they thought I was.”

When San Tekka gave her a curious look, she shuffled her feet and elaborated. “They never knew who I really was, partly because I never knew who I was and partly because I never let them see the real me.” Rey swallowed a lump that was growing in her throat. “If they met me again,” she said slowly, “I don’t know if I can pretend to be who they want anymore, and they…"

Her heart constricted in her chest. She'd become tunnel visioned on her goal to find Ben. Obsessive. To Finn it must have felt horrible to be scared for her as he watched his friend go mad and all but throw him away for a chance to bring back the monster of Finn's worst nightmares. Worse yet, hear Rey say that she _loved_ that monster.

She must have been the worst friend in the history of friendships. "They deserve better than me."

“It sounds terribly complicated,” he offered sympathetically.

She huffed a dry laugh and wiped her tears. “I suppose it is.”

“Might an old man give you a piece of advice?”

Rey shrugged. “Sure.”

“You’re very, very young, and life is very, very long.”

She resisted the urge to snort.

“Pain is real, and I won’t pretend to know how badly yours hurts, but time will ease it.” He said quietly, and gestured towards the western fields outside of town. There were scattered piles of stacked rocks there, the village graveyard. “I have buried two wives and a daughter there. Two of my brothers died in the Clone Wars, one fighting alongside the Jedi, one trying to protect his schoolmates. My parents before them. I have known great loss over my lifetime. The pain is unimaginable.”

Rey hurt for him, and could feel the surface of the depth of that pain in the Force. “...but time goes on, and eventually the pain lessens with the grief, and the love and comfort of the memories returns.”

He stood then, and she watched his face soften before turning back towards her. “Now, when I think of my daughter, I see her smile, not her grave.”

Rey sat in silence, unable to really form words. It didn’t seem as though he expected her to, and gave a reassuring squeeze to her shoulder before heading towards his home. “Goodnight.”

* * *

The next time she had tea with the kindly old man, she squeezed his hand and hoped he understood how grateful she was to him for his friendship and generosity.

“I want to go to Luke Skywalker.”

He seemed to understand, and squeezed her hand back with a smile that looked almost relieved. “...and so you shall.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you think!
> 
> Thanks again to my beta Sarah, you're the best!
> 
> Next time on SBS:  
> Ben has a chat with his uncle and realizes that the new girl might be a lot more trouble than what he initially pegged her for.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey meets the boys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahaha, this was supposed to be done a month ago. Oops. Please take this 11.5k extra long chapter as an apology for the wait.
> 
> THIS IS FOR YOU, ALEXIS! (Thanks for supporting me, you beautiful creature, you.)
> 
> And as always: The highest of praise, and the biggest of props to my Alpha/Beta reader MurderOfCrowss. You da best. <3

Three bodies moved in sync, falling to a wide-legged offensive stance. They were positioned identically, from the hard balls of their fists to the angle of their ankles. They'd all shed their upper robes and footwear, all over-heated and soaked with sweat from their exertions. Ben stood at the front of the class, tasked with leading the drills by Master Luke’s absence.

Ben shifted his weight, widened his stance and started a set of focused precision kicks.

Garren was the youngest of the group, three years Ben's junior. He made up for his age by being whole-heartedly devoted to his studies—especially the physical ones—and was nearly seething in jealousy that he wasn't the one leading drills. ‘ _I can't believe Mr.-karking-Perfect is in charge today, where's Master Skywalker?’_ Ben was more impressed that Garren was able to keep his expression stony and neutral than his execution of forms.

 _‘Ben looks like he woke up next to a Hutt.’_ The mental image that Hennix's overactive imagination conjured up churned Ben's stomach. His face must have turned green, because the Quarren's next thought was: _Maybe he's getting sick?_

Tai was, as always, overly focused on him and entirely too intuitive of his moods. ‘ _Ben looks upset. I sense the Force toiling around him.’_

It was all the same. All the time. Always Ben, Ben, _Ben_.

And they were being very _loud_ for three people who weren't saying a single word.

He was still feeling the effects of the nectar, but the warmth and easiness that spread comfortably through him last night had turned to a sluggish, over-sensitive body and a throbbing headache today. How Master Luke had the strength to wake up before dawn and gruffly order Ben to lead duties before disappearing was beyond him. Ben had only been able to blearily stare at the ceiling and wait until it didn't feel like his blood was flowing backwards to even _move_.

He'd laid there and thought about the inexplicably captivating dusting of freckles under the shifting glow of candle light. If he'd dreamed up the glint of curiosity and grief hidden behind verdant green flecks in intelligent, hazel eyes.

Maybe. Maybe not. Ben took solace in the knowledge that he wasn't terribly imaginative and the odds were in his favor that she wasn't the conjuring of a nectar-fueled hallucination.

The memory of his brief encounter with the mysterious girl from Jakku was fairly hazy. Luke was locked away in the inner sanctum of the temple—presumably with her— _Rey—_ now. No doubt they were discussing her abilities and potential to stay on at the temple permanently. It would take something impressive from her for his uncle to break his rules; to even consider it.

Tai, Hennix and Garren followed him into the next set of forms, their attention intensely focused on Ben. He didn't even see them. His mind was elsewhere. He was only half-paying attention as he shifted his center of gravity and shot his fisted arms out into a flurry of tightly controlled jabs and punches. His feet shifting seamlessly as his center of gravity lowered and his arms came up to start the self-defence stances.

 _‘Cocky show-off.’_ Garren mentally groused as he stumbled a bit to shift his own feet.

Ben's mood darkened, his whisky-colored eyes sliding slowly to focus on the younger class-mate.

 _They don't respect you. They don't respect your power. They hate you for it, because you’re better than them and they_ know _it._

“Can't keep up?” Ben droned lazily, smug delight surging through him when Garren shot him a glare that could melt durasteel. “We can take a break if you need it.”

 _‘Asshole.’_ “I'm fine.” Sweat was soaking his short-cropped dirty blond hair flat to his scalp, and his breathing was coming in almost gasping heaves from three hours of non-stop intensive physical exertion.

The spitting fury that roiled around Garren's mind told Ben that his words were a blatant lie, and it brought him a feeling of petty satisfaction when that anger distracted the student enough that his footwork stumbled again. Ben had to fight to keep the smirk off of his face. “You sure?”

“A break sounds _lovely_ ,” Tai croaked, nearly falling on his backside into a sit. His elbows hung limply over his knees, his naked chest heaving to catch a breath. Ben blinked at him, surprised to see the bald young man nearly soaked with sweat. Every inch of him was flushed red.

“That's a glorious idea, Tai, I'm glad I thought of it.” Hennix said, collapsing onto the floor entirely. His hulking body sprawled out on the semi-cool leather mats of the training room.

Ben sniffed and put his hands on his hips. He shot Garren another withered look, which was spitefully returned three-fold as the teenager crumpled into a cross-legged sitting position. Ben shook his head and turned away, annoyed at their inability to keep up. He'd lead the forms, he'd been going just as hard and fast as them, just as long, and he wasn't nearly as wiped out as they were. It was pathetic.

_You are superior. You are a descendant of the Force itself._

Ben shoved the thoughts away and chanced a glance at the temple's high dome through the windows of the training hall. It was nearly midday, how long was Master Luke and the girl going to be in there?

He reached to rub his left shoulder, rolling his arm to try and work some of the ache from the nectar out of it, and stubbornly continued to face the temple through the large windows. The training hall was adjacent to the temple, and there was a nice view of the Eastern side of the construct through the over-sized windows.

Ben had a clear, nearly perfect side-view of the temple's entrance, where he could see dozens of pilgrims coming and going from the main doors. They were an eclectic group of several different species, all humbly dressed in light hand-woven clothing, adorned with simple stone and bead jewelry. Children ran happily underfoot their parents, laughing gleefully in their excitement of the trip.

 _Unworthy heathens_. A harsh part of his mind whispered. Shame welled in him quickly and he reached a hand up to rub his eyes, frustrated and annoyed with his needless and increasingly antagonistic mood. Sometimes he wished he could just _switch off_.

“Their group is getting larger every year,” Tai mused as he stepped beside Ben. He was still red but wasn’t wheezing to breathe anymore. “I wonder if the Church of the Force is growing elsewhere in the galaxy as much as it is on Jakku.”

“I doubt it,” Ben mumbled, staring ahead. Something in Tai seemed to dim. His blue eyes fell to the floor, and he let out a sigh that was as heavy as it was small. Ben glanced towards him, sensing worry and apprehension roil off of him in slow, strong waves. “What?” he asked, brow creasing.

Tai shook his head. “I have doubts, too. Ben.” 

The admission came as quietly as a whisper. Ben rocked on his heels in shock, and his eyes darted to the other two students. They were relaxed and facing away from them, attention on their own conversation. “Doubts?” Ben repeated.

Tai was still. He looked like a child who'd gotten caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

“Tai—” Ben started.

“—forget I said anything,” he said quickly, turning towards Ben and clapping a hand on his shoulder. He had a smile on his face that didn't reach his eyes.

Ben frowned, he opened his mouth to say something again when the doors to the training hall slid open. Lor San Tekka stood at the threshold, eyes falling to each of the exhausted students. If the old man had any sort of headache from his drinks the night before, Ben couldn't tell. “I see you all are working hard, I'd expect nothing less from Master Skywalker's students.”

Ben worked his jaw in annoyance. Friend of Master Luke or not, the pilgrims—including Lor San Tekka— _were not allowed on the training grounds._

No doubt sensing Ben's mood and an opportunity to escape, Tai stepped towards San Tekka with a polite smile. “Was there something you needed, sir?"

San Tekka tutted, but his eyes were crinkled in amusement. “I've come with a message from your master," he said, surprising the four padawans, "Luke has gone into a deep meditation. He has asked you all to continue your normal routines. The congregation has politely offered to cook for you today.”

Hennix's crested head rolled back towards the ceiling, his two-fingered hands clapping together as though in prayer. “Thank the Maker,” he mumbled quietly, and stood. They began to make their way out of the dojo.

Garren snorted loudly and lightly shoulder-checked the larger alien as he walked passed. “Looks like you got out of kitchen duty.”

Ben was slow to leave, and eyed San Tekka as he closed the sliding doors. He couldn't help but wonder. "Is this about the girl?"

The old man smiled and hummed. "I told Luke what I knew about her, he called her powerful. I called her a curiosity."

Ben huffed. "You called her odd, first."

"I did," Lor San Tekka agreed, walking with Ben towards the temple. His ornate spirit necklace jingling lightly with his steps. "It sounds as though you've an impression of your own."

The tips of Ben's ears warmed. "What makes you think that?"

A hand clapped on Ben's shoulder, then pulled him closer so San Tekka's conspiratory whispers wouldn't carry. "As I recall, neither your uncle or I said the potential student was a _girl_."

Ben suddenly choked on air. San Tekka released him and roared with laughter.

* * *

The humidity was getting to be intolerable. Ben felt, an hour after his shower in the communal bath, that he still hadn’t dried off. If it were up to him, he wouldn’t be out in such Maker-awful weather, but he wanted to make sure his uncle got some food.

And maybe ask about the girl.

But mostly he just wanted to go to his hut, turn on a fan and go to sleep.

Ben readjusted the satchel of cold food in his old and knocked on his master’s doorway. There weren’t any lights or noises coming from inside. Maybe he’d already gone to sleep?

“Master Luke, I have your dinner.” Ben called, knocking again. 

Silence.

“Master?”

Ben grunted and reached out to slide the heavy curtain aside and looked into his uncle’s cramped quarters. Trinkets, clothes and tools were scattered everywhere, just as they had been the night before. The basket Ben had sat on was still overturned and on the floor. A half-empty bottle of nectar sat corked and on the table. The bed was made and untouched.

Master luke wasn’t there.

Ben stared. “Huh.”

He set the food down on the table and stepped back. His uncle would appreciate it whenever he got back in.

Satisfied that he’d done his duty, he turned and left.

* * *

Garren did a kip-up from his sprawled position on the ground and spit a glob of blood into the dirt. “You’re doing it again, Solo.” ‘ _Smarmy shithead.’_

“Winning?” Ben drawled, holding his wooden training saber out in a neutral stance. “You sound surprised.”

Garren grunted and held out his hand. His discarded wooden saber flew to his palm and the same instant it landed safely in his grip, he rushed Ben. “You’re not— _focusing_ .” ‘ _I’ll make you focus.’_

Ben grunted and within five strikes, had Garren back on the ground. “If I did that you would be face-deep in dirt twice as fast. Where’s the fun in that?”

“I’ll show you _fast—_ ” the smaller teen snarled and spun his body into a sweeping kick. Ben had to jump away, Garren was once again armed and rushing him almost before the taller of the two’s feet hit the ground.

Hennix whistled from his spot in the grass, lounging in a half-hearted meditation as he watched the two hotheads go at it. Garren made another sweeping move at Ben, and missed again, but not by so much as last time. “Almost,” he teased.

“Garren,” Tai sighed for the thirtieth-somethingth time, “one must be _calm.”_

_‘Ben does this every time. When will they ever stop antagonizing each other?’_

The youngest of the group kicked himself off the ground again, sporting a large grass stain on his back. Ben grunted and stabbed the tip of his wooden saber into the dirt, leaving it standing. He held both his hands out and turned towards Garren, palms up and fingers taunting. “I don’t even need a saber, come here _Nerffy_.”

Hennix barked in laughter. ‘ _Classic!’_ Garren saw red. ‘ _Motherkarkingsonofa—’_

Tai sighed again. ‘ _So childish.’_ “The Force cannot flow through you if you are clouded with emotions.”

The furious teenager went at Ben with everything he had—punching, kicking and even pushing with the Force. He managed to make Ben skidd back a few feet and go on the defensive for all of a second before the planet was upside down and he was once again eating grass.

 _‘How?!’_ Came the boy’s bewildered thoughts.

Ben snorted and walked back towards Tai and Hennix, who now was doubled over and struggling to breathe between howls of laughter. 

Garren tripped on his first attempt to get up, but got to his feet and stormed back over to the group. He spit another bloody glob into the grass and rounded on Tai. “How can you expect me to be calm when you put me with this—this _cheater!_ ”

Ben rolled his head back and groaned. “I don’t cheat—”

Garren cut him off with a snarl. “—you might as well! The way the Force outright _favors_ you—”

“How many times are we going to have this argument?!” Ben demanded, rounding on the smaller padawan. Garren immediately shut up and took a step back. “It _doesn’t_ favor me!”

Hennix’s laughter was starting to die down, but it wasn’t fast enough for the irritated Ben, who toppled the giant alien over with a push of the Force.

“Hey!”

“Whatever,” Garren grumbled, and wiped the blood from his nose. He projected the _‘asshole’_ barb loud enough that the others heard it, too.

“Garren…” Tai warned.

 _“Uncle Luke_ probably gave you extra pointers.” The boy groused as he shot Ben a rude gesture with his fingers.

In the blink of an eye, Ben snatched Garren by his offending digits and twisted his arm behind his back, threatening to dislocate his shoulder. “If you spent half as much time training as you did _running your mouth_ —” 

A wave of pure glee hit Ben then, and he didn’t have time to be confused before he heard an exhilarated “ _Gotcha!_ ” Garren grinned and flipped back on Ben, using the Force as a wave and riding it until it lifted him up and onto the taller padawan’s shoulders. “I _have_ been training."

“Not enough,” Ben snarked, and with a twist of his torso and push of the Force, threw Garren clear across the field. He sailed in the air for a full three seconds before hitting the ground and skidding to a stop a good bit further.

Ben wiped his hands clean and smirked.

Hennix wheezed, new peels of laughter threatening to bubble up, “ _Oof_. That’s gonna hurt tomorrow.”

Ben dusted the dirt from Garren’s shoes off of his shoulders.

_‘Animals, the both of them.’_

Ben rolled his eyes before Tai shot him an irritated look. “Do none of you have any concept of _control_ ? This was a _saber_ exercise. Why do you always devolve into a grappling match?”

“That’s not fair, Ben wasn’t even trying—” Hennix started, but stopped when Tai helped up a hand to silence him.

“He egged him on.” ‘ _Again. Ben is so powerful and takes nothing seriously. Garren needs to learn, not be goaded—’_

“He needs to get a handle on his temper,” Ben argued suddenly, interrupting Tai’s thought. He didn’t bother to deny the accusation. “He gets mad, he gets distracted and he gets sloppy. It always turns into a wrestling match because he always turns it into one. You think it’ll be different out in the real world? Taunting is a _part_ of fighting.”

Garren came running back to the group, face red from anger and exertion, mouth open and ready to start arguing again.

Ben held out a finger towards the shorter boy, face stern. Garren stopped in his tracks. 

He was already going and Master Luke wasn’t here to keep them quiet like he usually was. “You keep saying anyone who’s better than you has to be cheating, but the only reason we can beat you so easily is because you need _discipline_ . You’re mad you can’t beat me? I don’t care. Be mad. Maybe you would be at my level if you spent half as much time _practicing_ as you do _complaining_.” Ben scoffed and turned away. “You’re worse than Voe, at least she puts in the effort.”

 _‘What?! That’s it—’_

“Hey!” Tai barked, catching Garren when he lunged at Ben. “Take a break!”

“You’re an asshole," Hennix said to Ben as he stood up, then turned to Garren and tossed a handful of grass at him, "but you're dumb as shit.”

“Come on guys, switch off. We have an audience and at this rate, you’re not even embarrassing yourselves.” Tai hissed, nodding his head towards a steep cliff face a distance away. “You’re making us _all_ look bad.”

The immediate spike of curiosity from Hennix and Garren made Ben turn around.

They were both looking where Tai had gestured. The scrappy short-stuff was still huffing as he squinted to see what was up on the cliff, and Ben nearly rolled his eyes when he could hear the argument already forgotten in his mind. Bird-brained, that one. “Is that one of the pilgrims?”

_‘A human.’_

_‘A girl.’_

_‘A spy?’_

_Rey._

Tai let him loose and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked towards the cliff again, squinting his bright blue eyes a bit. “They’re not supposed to be on this side of the compound.”

“She has permission.” Ben said, walking over towards his training saber and pulling it out of the ground.

“Huh?” Hennix asked, turning towards him. “From who?”

“Master Skywalker,” Ben grunted, “Lor San Tekka brought her to speak to him.”

“That’s, uh, new.” Garren said, turning towards Ben with a wide, curious face. “Is she sensitive?”

“Why would he bring her to Luke if she weren’t?” He snapped.

Tai tilted his head to the side as though in thought. “Why is she watching us?”

Hennix snorted. “Let’s ask— _HEY, JAKKU!_ ”

The field was suddenly flooded with anxiety.

Tai gasped. “No!”

“Damnit, Hennix!” Ben snarled, and moved to tackle the hulking alien to shut him up.

 _‘Suffer, peasants.’_ Hennix easily skirted away from him and brought his hands up to cup his mouth and project his voice even more. His tentacles flared as his voice boomed across the yard. _“COME OVER!”_

Ben ran his hands over his face and groaned. “Maker, have mercy.”

“Hennix,” Garren stared at his friend as though he had grown more teeth. He shrugged his arms helplessly. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Hennix huffed and turned towards them, hands on his hips. “What?” He had the audacity to feign innocence.

“You can’t just—” Ben started, but stopped when he could hear footsteps approaching, “oh, shit.”

“Language—”

“—shut up, Tai!” Ben hissed, standing ramrod straight when Rey joined the group.

She wasn’t in her travel poncho today. Now she wore thin, but well-made blue linen pants, a white shirt and a cream-colored vest. There was a belt at her waist that held a skein of water, a rather lovely necklace made of beads and polished glass, and a staff on her back made of cobbled together durasteel pipes and fittings that Ben hadn’t seen before. “Hello,” she greeted, warm but shy.

Ben swallowed and turned to face her. “Hi.”

Tai remained silent, but snatched Garren’s shoulder before the boy could reach out and inspect Rey’s staff without permission.

“Are all humans so tragic or is it just you three?” The quarren lamented, and reached a clawed, two-fingered hand out towards Rey. “I’m Hennix. This is Tai, Garren and—”

“Ben,” she said with a smile, looking at him warmly.

“You’ve met, I see.” Hennix practically sang, glancing back to Ben with as much of an arched brow as the anatomy of his face would allow. ‘ _When did Benny-Boy start sneaking around with girls on us?’_

Ben coughed. Between the insinuating tone in Hennix’s voice and thoughts, coupled with the memory of Lor San Tekka’s gentle ribbing the day previous, his face was turning scarlet. He’d done absolutely nothing but speak to her in one perfectly respectable and probably embarrassing conversation, but the way they teased, someone would sooner think he made a pass at her.

“Once. Briefly.” She said, and Ben could sigh in relief from the save. “I’m Rey.”

“Hello, Rey.” Tai said politely. “What brings you to The Praxium?”

She shuffled her feet and scrunched her nose in the same way she had that first night, lips stretched in a half-smile. “The Force.”

Hennix huffed. “ _Touché_.”

“Were you all sparring?” She asked, looking around at the group. They were all dirty and scruffed up, especially Garren. He looked like he’d been beaten half to death, buried, and then clawed his way back out from the earth. Not that it seemed to bother him at all. He had an ear-to-ear grin on his face.

“No, we were just messing around,” he chirped, shrugging out from under Tai’s hold. “Luke’s holed himself up in the inner sanctum and that means we get to slack off for a little while.”

“It absolutely does not mean that we can slack off.”

“Yes, it does.” Hennix argued, flopping back onto the grass and, as if to prove a point, laid down.

_‘She looks strong—she’s all muscle and balance, look at that scar, it's from a vibro-blade! I bet that hurt, WHOA what's on her back—’_

“Can you fight?” Garren continued animatedly. He was circling around Rey and trying to get a look at her weapon, and Ben was getting a headache from the speed of his thoughts. “You look tough. Did you make this thing? Can I see it?”

Rey struggled to keep an eye on him. “I’ve been in a scrap or two,” she answered, yelping when she felt a sharp tug on her staff, “what are you doing?”

Ben snatched the younger boy away. “Sorry, he’s— _cut it out or I’ll throw you again,_ ” he hissed, and waved a dismissive hand at the smaller boy as he shoved him back towards Tai. “He’s _Garren_.”

_‘Eat shit, Solo.’_

“Stop,” Tai shot him a look, “you’re being rude.”

He blushed and slumped his shoulders in defeat. “Sorry. I just like fighting.”

_‘She must be pretty for a human, because they’re acting like idiots.’_

Ben worked harder to block their thoughts out. Between the thoughts and all the talking, he was starting to get a headache.

“It’s alright,” Rey smiled, furrowing her brows at him in confused amusement. She turned towards the others then, and Ben swore her eyes lingered on him a beat longer than anyone else. “I was hoping I could get a proper tour of the temple, but Lor San Tekka and the pilgrims only go from the shipyard to the sanctum.”

“That’s all they’re allowed to do.” Hennix supplied, plucking a sturdy grass stalk and using it to clean between his two large fangs.

Rey blinked curiously down at the relaxed alien. “Why is that?”

“The temple is built on a vergance,” Tai explained, “sometimes the vergance can go into flux and anyone who isn’t sensitive can be affected. It’s really more for their safety.”

“Oh.”

Ben cleared his throat. “Plus there’s the library and the vault. Master Luke spent years building the Praxeum’s collection of Jedi artifacts. They’re all priceless.”

She turned to him sharply, hazel eyes glittering in excitement. “There’s a library?”

“Wouldn’t be much of a school without one,” Hennix teased.

Garren rolled his eyes, apparently deciding that Rey was destined to be another book-nosed academic type and was already in the process of dismissing her. “Ben spends the most time there, he could show it to you,” he said, waving a hand in his direction.

Tai glared, nearly at the end of his rope with Garren’s antics. “Don’t volunteer others for—” 

“I would like that.” Rey cut in suddenly. There was a light pink hue to her cheeks.

Ben swallowed again. “Oh.”

Hennix sniggered from his spot in the grass. ' _Tragic_.'

* * *

Ben knocked sharply on his uncle’s doorway before tossing the heavy curtain aside. "Master Luke, I—"

The room was empty. The food he’d brought last night sat untouched on the table, spoiled and infested with insects.

Ben turned around and looked towards the sanctum, incredulous _"_ Still? _"_

With a huff, he left the fresh dinner on the table and collected the ruined meal from the night previous. He hisses in annoyance as he flung the contents a good distance away, shaking a glob of cold, hardened gruel free from the side of the bowl in annoyance.

* * *

  
  


Ben was completely unsurprised to see the food still there when he came again the next morning.

He grumbled and collected the dishes, chucking the untouched contents far into the grass before heading straight for the temple. It would be empty so early in the morning—before dawn, even. He used a push of the Force to open the temple’s heavy doors and didn’t bother to close them, insteads heading straight to the second set of doors just beyond the pilgrim’s offering tables. They opened to a vestibule that led straight into another doorway, that led to the library, and two branching stairways.

The right led to the artifact chamber, where Master Luke kept his treasured Jedi artifacts. The left led high to the top of the temple, and to the smaller inner sanctum. 

He set his burden of bowls down at the bottom of the steps and went left.

He scaled the stone steps as quickly as possible, going so far as to skip every other step. At the end of the sairs was another set of doors, and Ben took care to be quiet as he opened them and peered inside. Nobody had seen or heard from his uncle in more than fifty hours and Ben needed to confirm with his own eyes that their Master was still okay.

The room was bright with natural light filtering through floor-to-ceiling stained glass windows. Scenes from Jedi history depicted in grand scale decorated huge panes between slabs of wall, and the effect littered the room in brilliant flashes of color.

Large matching rugs were lined on the floor in a circular pattern and angled towards a large iron incense burner that acted as the centerpiece of the room. Well-used and tattered cushions messily littered six of the rugs, and they all had more-or-less matching spots worn into the center of them where the students all sat for hours and meditated over the last decade.

A seventh, less used and much neater rug sat half-bathed in sunlight and shade. There was a slight layer of dust dulling its patterns, and the three small pillows were stacked neatly onto the end of it, just as they had been for the last five years, since their owner's death.

Ben didn’t pay it any mind, and instead focused on the far end of the room. Luke had his legs folded over themselves in a textbook lotus position, wrists resting against his knees. His uncle’s eyes were closed, and his body hovered three feet off of the floor. The force was moving through him like an ocean current, powerful and steady.

He was alive and unhurt, deep in meditation. Just as Lor San Tekka said.

It was enough for Ben, and he quietly left the room, careful to close the door without making noise. He’s still careful to be silent as he makes his way into the outer sanctum. He nearly didn’t realize that he wasn’t alone before he exited the vestibule. He stopped in his tracks and backed back into the shadow of the grand doorway, eyes falling on a small figure approaching the offering tables.

A small female figure. A familiar female.

 _Rey_.

She laid a rolled blanket on the table, decorated in patterns of white and dyed blue linen, beads and glass strewn into the fabric. It was an ornate piece, hand-made by her, probably. He found himself curious to see what it looked like, but kept to the shadows, even more curious to watch her.

She brought her hands together in a gesture of prayer, bowed her head and parted her hands, lifting them up and repeating the action once more, just as the pilgrims did. She reached over towards the table then, lighting a candle and muttering something before turning to leave.

He watched her go, and waited another few minutes himself before he moved. He eyed the blanket on the table as he emerged from his spot in the shadows, but ultimately left it alone.

He picked up the bowls and took them to the kitchen. 

He didn’t see her for the rest of the day.

  
  


* * *

The third day found Ben in a foul temper.

Sleep had eluded him, and what little he did manage was restless and full of nightmares. Images of fire and blood were still replaying in his mind every time he closed his eyes and the headache he woke up with was refusing to abate. He was in absolutely no mood to for the company of his fellow padawans, and even if he would have liked the peace and quiet that came from his duties in the library, he didn’t know if he would be able to sit and stare at half-decayed books and summon the mental fortitude needed to painstakingly translate and draft texts older than the planet the moon they called ‘home’ orbited.

He didn’t seek her out. He wanted _solitude_ and when his feet carried him to the waterfall, he was equal parts surprised and annoyed to see her already there.

It was a tall, thirty-foot cliff with a gentle stream that poured into a huge, natural plunge-pool of clear, cold water. It flowed lazily out into the river that further downstream became the temple’s water source. It was secluded, hundreds of feet into the woods that flanked the eastern side of The Praxium’s property. It wasn’t an easy hike through the thickets to get to, but was worth the journey.

It was a peaceful place. Beautiful. Easily one of his favorites on the entire moon.

Rey sat on the water bank, on top of a blanket that kept the dirt off of her skin as she relaxed near the water. Her hair was wet and unbound, curling slightly as it tried to dry in the miserable humid weather. It was longer than he would have guessed, just reaching her shoulders. He saw her and the headache almost immediately returned. His master had been missing for days with no reason or warning, the temple flooded with pilgrims and only half of the students even planet-side. He didn’t think Lor San Tekka would ever attempt anything against the temple, but it’s _breathtaking_ vulnerability grated on his nerves in a way he couldn’t even articulate.

In hindsight, he should have stopped his approach when he saw that she only had on a tunic that reached her upper thighs. He stormed heavily into the clearing, snapping twigs and kicking sand as he went. He was in no way trying to sneak up on her, but either she had riverwater in her ears or she was one of the types that could fall into a light meditation wherever she was, because she didn’t notice him until he was nearly behind her and speaking.

"What did you tell Master Luke?"

She shrieked and jumped to her feet in an instant, fists balled and ready for a fight. Her eyes were wild and wide with shock, turning hard and angry when she finally realized it was him. Rey dropped her fists and reached down to snatch up her blanket, tying it around her waist like a sarong. “I didn’t do anything _to_ him, I asked him for his help!”

Ben crossed his arms over his chest. “Help with what?”

Rey stood and looked at him for a second, like she couldn’t believe he was actually questioning her. There was a small, logical part of his brain shrieking underneath his headache and lack of sleep for him to shut up, but once the question was out of his mouth, there wasn’t any way of un-asking it, and he was curious. She huffed and shook her head, tying off the blanket in jerky, angry movements. “My grandfather wants to kill me,” she said bluntly, shoving her feet into her boots. “I asked for his protection and training so I can defend myself when he comes.”

“You came seeking _asylum?_ ” He couldn’t keep the skepticism out of his voice.

Rey glared at him. “Yes.”

Ben frowned. He couldn’t sense anything from her other than a faint wave of aggravation. He’d hoped if he came at her all wrong and pissed her off she’d slip, and he’d be able to hear something from her. So far, it wasn’t working. “Why does he want to kill you?”

“He wants my power for himself and he will kill whoever he thinks he has to until he gets it.” She leaned her weight to one hip and mirrored his crossed arms. “He ruins lives as easily as breathing.”

Ben’s eyes darkened as he mulled over what she said. _Her grandfather wants her power?_ That didn’t make any sense. “Who is he?”

She started to storm towards him, muttering under her breath and trying to balance her belongings and her hastily made wrap. “...don’t even know why I’m surprised—always has to needle and dig and—”

Ben reached out, blocking her path. She could easily walk passed, and the rational part of his mind might have been starting to regain control because even if he were still too stupid and angry to properly apologize, he could feel his expression soften enough, and his hand to fall away from impeding her.

“Who is he?” Ben asked again, his voice softer, more concerned.

And he was, because clearly, _whoever_ he was, it had his master concerned, too. 

Rey didn’t look at him. He could see most of her anger leave her, shoulders slumping and body almost visibly deflating. Her expression was unreadable, and as always, she was a perfect void in the Force, completely hidden from his senses.

...but the way she whispered “ _evil_ ,” as though she were scared to even say it, as though she feared even speaking of her grandfather might summon him, he believed her.

Ben stood still, stunned silent as Rey ducked her head and continued to leave. “I can’t say any more until Luke makes a decision.”

* * *

He delivered dinner for Luke again, and for the third night, he wasn’t there.

Ben expected as much, and didn’t feel too guilty that he’d just gotten double-portions of what he liked.

More for him.

* * *

He wasn’t looking for her when he found her on the western fields the next day.

Tai was tasked to cook and Ben had been sent to forage for edible greens and mushrooms that grew in the shady areas where the grassy hills tapered off into a field strewn with boulders the size of houses.

They weren’t natural to the area, arranged in circular patterns and carved with a pictographic language that had been dead for an eon before Luke Skywalker ever set foot on the moon’s surface. They may have had a holy purpose to whatever species once inhabited Yavin 4, maybe a way to measure the stars. Ben didn’t know, but he’d always been curious about the spot when he was a child, and spent a lot of time pouring attention over all of the intricate carvings and designs in the stones.

He found her sitting in the shade of a large boulder covered with barely-discernible hand-prints. Time, moss and the elements weren’t kind to the paintings, but even still he could make out the outline of hundreds of child-sized, four-fingered hands stacking over each other in various earthen hues of red, brown and black paints. Of all the stones here, it was his favorite.

Ben knew he owed her an apology for his behavior the day before. He hadn’t planned to run into her in the stone field or even see her so early, but before he’d gone to sleep last night he had resolved to seek her out before the day was over and make an actual attempt to say he was sorry. Rey was a fascinating girl. He enjoyed the brief conversations they’d had over the week, and it was such a rare thing to be able to be near someone and not be bombarded with private thoughts and mental images.

Ben didn’t know if what they had was the beginnings of a friendship, he didn’t know if he’d ever really had a friend, but Ben found that he enjoyed her company, and honestly hoped he hadn’t run her off with his abrasive mood.

He’d even thought up about half of what to say when he’d make his grand apology spiel, but it’d flown right out his head the moment Ben caught sight of her.

As did everything else. Because she was _floating_.

She was in a perfect lotus position, just as he’d seen Master Luke do a thousand times, legs folded over themselves, wrists resting on her knees, eyes closed, face serene, floating three feet off of the ground as though she were a detached entity from the reality around her. Something _other_ that even the laws of gravity couldn’t hold, but still real enough that the gentle morning breeze made the loose tendrils of hair framing her face dance over freckled skin.

“What do you want?”

The sudden sound of her voice jolted him. When a single hazel eye opened to glare at him, he lifted his basket, letting the pathetic amount of greens and mushrooms he’d found on his way into the heart of the henge speak for him.

She huffed and rolled in the air, landing deftly on her feet. He’d never seen anyone use the Force so gracefully.

“You know how to do a dual-channel meditation,” he blurted, “it took me years to be able to do that. Who taught you?”

“Self study.” The way she bit out the answer told him that she was still mad. He’d have to fix that. “I found some old books. They didn’t teach a lot, but I figured this much out.” She had a small travel bag and her staff leaned against the painted boulder, and started reaching for them.

“You must be some sort of genius then,” he offered, raising an eyebrow at her.

Rey stilled in her reach for the bag, slowly standing back up to give him a suspicious, weary glare.

“I was rude yesterday,” he said quietly, shifting his weight and working his jaw. He didn’t usually apologize to anyone for anything. It was harder than he thought. Best to rip the bacta patch off in one quick pull. “I’m sorry.”

Rey looked so surprised that he wondered if he’d somehow said something else in Huttese. He quickly cleared his throat and looked away from her, bending his knee to set one of his feet on a smaller, nearby stone. “So, what do you think of the temple? Has it grown on you yet?”

“The weather hasn’t,” she said after a moment, turning away from her bag and crossing her arms over her chest. 

Ben fought the grin that threatened to spread over his face. “Hennix is the only one loving it, I’m sure.”

Rey looked around at the henge then, walking towards another stone that was more between them. She ran her fingers over a carving of the Yavin Prime that always loomed in the sky above. There were images of a dozen humanoid beings kneeling and raising their arms up to the celestial gas giant. “I like it here,” she said quietly, “every inch of this world is so beautiful, and I can feel the Force so strongly. I think my heart would break if I had to go.”

Ben frowned. They were edging around a subject he’d been avoiding throughout the days she’d been here. “The pilgrims are leaving soon. If my uncle doesn’t emerge by then…”

She would have to go with them.

“I know,” she sighed, and offered him a weak smile. “Master Luke promised that he would have an answer before they left.” There was still worry in her voice. Ben could see it on her, too.

“I’ve never seen him go into meditation for so long.” He admitted, and reached his free hand up to card his fingers through his hair. He could feel the sweat already beading on his scalp. _Maker_ he wished it would rain already. “Whatever you told him must have shocked him.”

“It scared him,” she corrected quietly, and seemed to get lost in thought. A moment passed, and she stepped away from the stone with a shift of her feet. She paused, and noticed he was blatantly staring at her. "What?"

He jutted his chin to her just slightly, brow creased. He probably had an idiotic look on his face—something akin to wonder. “What are you thinking about?”

Her lips parted just slightly. He’d stunned her. "I usually have an idea," he said as he tapped a finger to his temple. "Everyone projects—but you…" he trailed off, and dropped his hand "...you’re so quiet."

Rey stepped closer to him, arms crossed. He could smell the tuanulberry soap on her skin. "You want to know what I'm thinking?"

He swallowed thickly. "Yes."

She seemed to consider him for a moment, more breathed the word “ _okay_ ” than said it, and then it was like a curtain had been drawn back from a window.

He couldn’t hear her thoughts, but the fleeting images that he did see were laced with emotion—her delight as her hand reaching out to touch the gentle flow of the waterfall yesterday, her curiosity and awe at the intricate artwork of the temple, the constant noises of animals and surprise at discovering more and more beautiful plant life each day. Always so green. Always so vibrant.

He caught a glimpse of a memory of sand and a dry heat. There were unpleasant emotions attached to it. Relief of escape. Shame.

“You do like it here,” he said as he caught a glimpse of her first sight of Yavin 4 on the transport a week ago. The small jungle moon was half-shrouded in shadow from it’s parent planet, covered in clouds and water and greenery. She could feel the Force wrapped around it all the way from space.

The memory shifted to her discovering the henge that morning. She ran her fingers over the engravings and he could, through her memory, catch wisps of images of the creatures who carved them. Child-sized humanoids with overly-large eyes and piebald spots decorating their skin. He marveled at the image of them. He’d always wondered.

Before he realized it, her thoughts had changed again. He seemed to be wearing a similar expression as he had the night they’d met, and her memory was back to them standing in the temple. Of how she was relieved and happy to see him. Of how young and healthy he looked. Of how her heart was pounding in her chest at the sound of his voice, deep and smooth and—

Rey made a noise in her throat and closed her mind off abruptly.

“Ah,” Ben staggered, shivering as he felt like he withdrew back into his own body. 

“Have we met before?” He asked suddenly, seemingly catching her off guard. Her face was a bright pink now. He knew she hadn’t meant for him to see the last memory. “It’s just—you're…" he waved a hand helplessly between them. "You’re so _familiar_."

She shifted her weight nervously and looked away. “In another life, maybe."

He thinks he may have overstepped a boundary. He moved towards another stone, sighing. “Have I ruined your morning?”

She shook her head. “No,” her hand reached up to cup her shoulder, thumb gliding over a scar there. She was looking at him critically then, as though trying to calculate something. “You’re not how I thought you’d be.”

He crouched and plucked a handful of the greenleaf Tai had sent him out to gather. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, I know he’s your uncle.” Rey said offhandedly, nodding her chin towards the temple. A stone settled in Ben’s stomach. “I know who your parents are. You don’t lord it around everyone.”

He snatched up a cluster of greenleaf with a bit more violence than necessary. “Their achievements aren’t mine.”

“No,” she agreed “but your strength is yours.” He stood abruptly and turned away from her as he shoved the weeds into the basket. His heart was beating in his ears. “You have a stronger connection to the Force than the others here do. You’re practically smothering it down while you’re around them.”

He spun to face her. She was closer than he thought. Just a step away. “You can sense that?”

“Yeah,” she tilted her head in confusion, “am I not supposed to?”

“No, it’s…” His eyes trailed over her face, comparing each detail to what he remembered noticing from the night they met. “you’re all backwards.”

“Huh?”

“Every Force user is an empath on some level, but hardly any are outright telepaths, and even _less_ are able to sense how others use the force within themselves.” He said, staring down at her in astonishment. “Supposedly, you have no idea about the basic foundations of the Force, yet you’re able to do things that Master Luke hasn’t even taught us yet.”

Her nose scrunched up and her eyes looked down. “Is that weird?”

“It’s _fascinating_.”

“Oh.” Her eyes were back on his in an instant. “I-I’m not a telepath, if that’s what you’re trying to ask.” She stuttered, and took a breath. “You said everyone projects, and they do, but I get the impression that you’ve always been able to hear people’s minds whether you wanted to or not.”

He nodded, and leaned back onto the boulder behind him. “Yeah.”

“My being quiet must have been a shock to you.”

“Everyone has their quirks,” he admitted with a small grin, “but you’re right. I always hear what people think. Everyone here knows about it and tend to keep up mental shields, and it helps, because believe me, I don’t want to hear any of it.”

She gave him a look and he sighed. “Hennix loves to send disgusting images,” he explained, gesturing around his head and trying very hard to not remember any of the more disgusting examples. “Garren is constantly insulting me, trying to get a rise off me. Mara just avoids me and _Voe,”_ ben half-growled the name, jerkily thrusting a handful of mushrooms into his basket. “She tries to block me out harder than any of the others, and can’t, because her mental defenses are _abysmal_ , and then accuses me of _listening on purpose_ whenever anything slips through.”

Rey looked incredulous. “They can’t keep their minds quiet?”

“Not even Master Skywalker, not entirely,” Ben confirmed.

At Rey’s stunned expression, he lifted a finger towards her, “...but you can,” he said, opening his palm and letting it fall back down to rest on his hip. “I haven’t heard anything since the moment I met you.”

“You wouldn’t want to hear what I have to think, anyway.” She shrugged, smiling sheepishly. “My brain mostly revolves around food and your uncle, these days.”

“I suppose so.” He said with a half-chuckle.

This was good. They were back to the easy conversation. He felt more relieved than he thought he would. He pushed away from the stone then and walked off a ways, bending to collect another cluster of mushrooms. “How old were you when you realized you had the Force?”

“Why?”

“Well,” he made a show of standing up and spinning on his heel as he stepped away. “I can’t hear your thoughts, so I have to go the long way about finding out about you, and ask questions like a normal person.”

She snorted. “Now that just sounds exhausting.”

“It’s not so bad, so far.” He said honestly, surprised to see that she was also starting to collect a handful of greenleaf near her. “Most people can go their whole lives without ever knowing they have the Force. Some are able to sense things here and there and chalk it up to a ‘gut feeling’ or ‘luck’ and never realize what’s really guiding them.”

“I was a scavenger, on Jakku.” She said after a moment. “My parents left me there when I was young, and hid me from my grandfather. I always had a lot of near misses with slips and had a knack for finding the best scraps. Always could sense when it wasn’t a good time to be around others, had a gut feeling when I was in danger.” Ben watched her as she stepped towards him and deposited the greens.

He considered her for a moment. “Something happened.”

She nodded. “When I was nineteen I got pulled in the middle of a mess and ended up getting kidnapped.”

He might have winced. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” She suddenly looked like she was desperately trying not to break out into a fit of giggles then, and he had no idea why. “I had to fight my way out, and the—my kidnapper—ended up helping me realize I had it.”

“I see you won the fight.” He mused, wondering if that scar on her shoulder was all she got for her trouble.

“Yep,” she sang, popping the ‘p’ at the end, shooting him some sort of indiscernible look as she stepped away and went looking for more greens. “He kept showing up every now and then for a while after, and I guess having to keep fighting him off sort of made me figure out a lot on the fly.”

“Your kidnapper was a Force user? A darksider?” He asked, remembering the one and only time he’d ever met a darksider.

She stiffened a bit, not facing him as she reached for more of the edible plant. “Yes.”

“Was it a Knight of Ren?”

Her head spun around towards him so fast he heard it crack. “What?”

“When I was a kid I went out on a trip with Master Skywalker and Lor San Tekka.” He explained, watching her as she quickly turned back around and brushed her hands on her hips. She was nervous. “We went to an old, abandoned Jedi outpost and while we were there, we ran into a group of darkside users. Ren and his Knights of Ren.”

He remembered the man and how his skin looked rotted from the inside out. How the force felt wrong around him, but familiar, and how it gave him nightmares for weeks afterwards.

_“Look me up if you ever want to learn about your shadow.”_

Ben shook himself loose of the memory and went for another mushroom. “They were dangerous then, and that was probably eight years ago. Master Skywalker ran them off, but their leader seemed to sense the Force in me.” He put the mushroom in his basket and chanced a glance at her. “I wondered if it was him you ran into.”

“It wasn’t him.”

Ben scowled. “But it was _a_ Knight of Ren.”

“Maybe, I don’t know, I didn’t ask when he was trying to cut my friend in half while he screamed ‘join-me-or-die’.” Rey huffed, stepping up to him and being careful to keep her face down as she deposited her gathered bits into his basket. It was half-full now. “How old were you when you learned you had the Force?”

She was deflecting.

He wouldn’t press her.

“I’ve always had it,” he shrugged, “my father said I’d been making things float since I was in the crib.”

She seemed surprised at that, and suddenly she was looking at him again, and her eyes were curious. “Really?”

They were also red-rimmed.

“Um, yeah,” he muttered, and carded his fingers through his hair again. She watched the movement intently. “It’s strong with us—in my family, I mean.”

She hummed in thought. “Mine, too, in a sense.”

“Your grandfather?” Ben ventured tentatively. 

She nodded and walked over to her pack and staff. “Walk me back to the shipyard?”

“Uh, sure.”

She sighed and lifted her shoulder to wipe some of the sweat off of her forehead. “Is it always so hot here? I think I’d almost rather go back to Jakku if _this_ is normal.”

* * *

On the fifth day, he didn’t see her until dinner.

The students had offered to repay the pilgrims their kindness and cook a meal for them, and while the gesture was nice, it was also Primeday, and that meant Hennix was on kitchen duty.

Tai had set up two large tables with pots and trays of half fresh cooked supplies and portion packs, the combination of the two giving enough for everyone to have full bellies. Voe and Mara were already overdue for returning with supplies, but when Tai commed them last, they said they would be there soon.

Ben was almost counting the minutes until he could have real food again.

Reconstituted vitamin loaves were stacked neatly on another large tray, looking more like rocks than something edible, but it all smelled good enough, and the charmed pilgrims ushered through the line eagerly. He’d become nearly mechanical as he reached for a bowl, scooped a helping of rice into it, then passed it off to Hennix. He’d probably served two dozen pilgrims before Rey came through the line.

She gave them all a bright smile and held her plate out politely. “This is sweet of you. Lor San Tekka said you hardly ever cook for them.”

Tai nodded and offered her a two-piece portion of the green gelatinous mess. “We are repaying a kindness.”

Garren bounced on his feet and tossed her a vitamin loaf. She caught it quickly and shot him a look just as Tai swatted him on the back of the head. Rolling her eyes at the boy’s antics, she stepped down the line and stood just in front of Ben.

“Hello,” she greeted warmly.

Ben inclined her head towards her and dutifully took her bowl. He gave her a generous helping of the sticky grain before handing it off to Hennix. The quarren towered over a large, steaming pot, and was entirely too happy to give her a ladle full of opaque yellow soup.

Rey’s smile faded as she took her bowl back and saw something that looked like it may have come off of Hennix’s face curled back into the bowl.

“It’s a delicacy.” He said proudly, his facial tentacles curling happily.

“What is it?” Rey asked, sniffing the contents. “It smells good, but…” something definitely moved under the surface, “...it’s still alive.”

“River Bisque.” Ben supplied. He sounded very unenthusiastic to be having it.

Garren started bouncing on the balls of his feet next to him, his dirty-blond hair bouncing slightly. “It’s Hennix’s favorite.”

She gave the towering alien a surprised look. “You cooked this?”

“Yes.” All four of them chimed at once. Ben and Tai’s droning tones carried loudly.

Rey cleared her throat. “Does he cook often?”

“ _No_.” The humans all said, too quickly to be polite.

Hennix sniffed and stirred the pot with his ladle. “Your unrefined pallets could never appreciate the delicacies of my people.” He tapped it against the edge of the pot and cursed when something reached up through the soup and wrapped around the handle.

Ben snorted. “At what point is it considered cannibalism?”

Garren cackled with laughter.

Hennix easily reached behind Ben and swatted the smaller boy over the back of his head. He nearly pitched forward and knocked over his tray of bread loaves. “Keep it up you guys, and you’ll get a cuddle outta this fish you might not like.”

In front of him, Rey’s eyes widened comically.

Hennix seemed to realize his mistake almost as soon as he said it. “That sounded better in my head.”

Rey took a tentative sip of the soup. She coughed once, but stood up straighter and nodded. “It’s _different_ ,” she said, “but it’s good.”

“Thank you.”

Ben rolled his eyes. Hennix sounded like he was going to cry.

Then Rey jumped and nearly dropped all her food when something slithered in her bisque and squirted ink in it. “Oh, is it supposed to do that?”

“It’s safe to eat, but it might turn your teeth black,” came a voice behind them. The group all turned to face the temple’s door, where Luke Skywalker was staggering out of the doorway above them.

Garren and Tai gasped at the sight of him and moved to rush to his side. “Master Skywalker!”

“I’m fine,” Luke groused, waving them off and making his way down the stone steps. His voice was dry and sounded like rubbing sandpaper. When he got close enough for Ben to really see his face, he could see the deep purple bags under his eyes and chapped lips. The smell of body odor was profound, but nobody commented on it and opted to wisely keep their mouths shut. 

Luke came quickly to the table and waved his hand towards Ben and Hennix, who were working together to pile food on a tray for their Master. “Give me extra,” he grunted, snatching a protein loaf and plopping it directly into his bowl of bisque.

Ben frowned as he stepped out from behind Hennix and moved to Luke’s side. “You’re weak. You’ve been in the inner sanctum for days. You need—” 

Luke cut him off with a wave of his hand, but allowed Ben to hold his food for him. “I’ll be fine,” he reassured, and turned towards the stunned girl. “Rey.”

She jumped and stood ramrod straight. “Yes, sir.”

“I’ve thought about what you’ve told me. _Extensively_. I’ve considered it and all the ramifications that would come from it.”

_‘What in the galaxy did that little human tell him?’_

_‘He’s been in meditation this long without a break? Badass.’_

_‘This is ominous.’_

_Please._

“I’ll help you.”

Rey let out a rush of air. Ben caught a brief wave of relief from her. “Thank you—”

“I expect you to do your part.” Luke said sternly, cutting her off. “Train. Learn. Stay the course.”

“Yes, sir. I will, sir.” Rey nodded quickly. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” Luke grumbled, and nodded his head at Ben. “Come with me.”

“Yes, Master,” Ben shot Rey a look before hurrying after his Uncle. The man was a surly mess and he didn’t want to aggravate him any further.

They hadn’t started down the cobbled pathway to the padawan huts before Luke started to labor to breathe. Ben furrowed his brow in worry. There was absolutely no doubt in his mind that his uncle was dehydrated, and the muggy heat was at its end-of-day worst. “You need water.”

“I have some in my hut.” Luke grumped, walking fast enough that Ben and his long legs struggled to not fall behind. “Keep up.”

It was a long, tense walk back to his Master’s hut and Ben was grateful when they got inside and out of the heat. Luke wasted no time in turning on a fan and shedding his outer robe. Ben set the tray of food on the table and pulled up the overturned basket that he tended to use as a seat whenever visiting.

Luke had a large sealed vase of water stored aside his dresser, and drank three fills of a nearby cup before finally having his fill of it and relaxing. He stood over the ceramic pot, hands resting on either side and breathing heavily--probably trying not to throw up, after guzzling a liter of water on an empty stomach.

His voice didn’t sound any better. “How long?”

“Five days.”

Luke turned his head away from Ben and made a humming noise. “I see you’ve all met her. What’s your impression?”

Ben straightened his back and turned his focus towards the table. “She’s intelligent. Observant. Kind, but not naive. Not overly quiet or outspoken.” Luke filled his cup of water once more and turned away from the vase, giving his nephew a scrutinous look as he sat down. Ben cleared his throat. “She’s not very forthcoming with her history, but when I questioned her, she did say that she was the granddaughter of a dangerous man. Enough that her parents hid her from him on Jakku and she’s come here to ask you for protection against him.”

Ben tapped his fingers on his knees. “She was a scavenger for a time, but was kidnapped a year ago, and her kidnapper forced her powers to awaken.”

Luke picked up the bique-soaked bread loaf and ate it in a single bite. Juice dribbled down his beard, he lifted the bowl and swallowed half of its contents with all the decorum of a rancor. “What else?”

“Her grandfather seems to be a powerful darksider, maybe Sith, and probably wants to make her his apprentice.” Luke shot him a look. Ben leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest, working his jaw. “I’ve read about the Sith in the texts I copy. They have some sort of ritual called ‘Rule of Two’. Maybe that’s what he’s after.”

Luke’s eyes turned downcased for a moment, and his chewing slowed, as though he were thinking. He hummed again, and pointed his bowl towards Ben just slightly. “Have you sensed any darkness? Have you sensed any lies?”

“No _,”_ Ben said firmly, shaking his head. He lifted a hand up to rub his eyes, sighing in frustration. “I haven’t sensed much of anything from her, but what I have has been light.”

“Her defenses.” Luke huffed.

Ben nodded and waved his hand dismissively. "She projected some emotions, but only for a second, and then they were just gone. The only time I was able to hear any of her thoughts were when she deliberately let me."

Luke reached for the tray and grabbed another protein loaf. He dunked it into the second half of his bisque and took a more controlled bite. He chewed loudly. "You think she's had training?"

He shrugged. "Maybe."

Luke narrowed his eyes at his nephew.

Ben rolled his eyes and leaned forward. "Defenses like that aren’t developed to that extent without reason." He held out his hand and moved it from side to side as he spoke. "She said there was a darksider that kept attacking her, which isn’t impossible, I suppose, but the sheer _level_ doesn’t make sense. Master, even _you_ aren’t that good, and she says it’s only been a year."

“So it’s either been more than a year or a very bad one.” Luke grunted, and Ben’s mouth fell open slightly in shock. “Which would you say?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say very bad.” It came out sounding more like a question than he’d have liked. “I’ve sensed pain in her, grief, longing. She’s lost friends, probably to the one who’s been attacking her.” Ben set his jaw as he said it. He hated to think of what her time had been like before she came to them for help.

He must have been projecting. Luke set his hand on Ben’s shoulder stiffly, before letting it fall back away and continued eating. “She will be staying here. She’ll train, she’ll be safe...and I will be able to keep an eye on her.”

Ben’s face twisted into confusion. “You’re suspicious of her?”

“I’m wary,” Luke corrected. “In any case, she’ll need help with remedial studies if she really has been spending the last fifteen years picking sand dunes on Jakku. I’m trusting you to catch her up.”

“What? Why?”

Luke rolled his eyes and gestured towards Ben impatiently. “You’re more advanced than the others, and have enough spare time.”

Ben scowled in offense. “Copying the ancient texts isn’t _spare time_ —”

“It’s you in the library surrounded by books for at least two hours a day.” Master Skywalker snapped, slapping his fist to the table. Ben immediately shut his mouth. Luke hissed in annoyance when his cup of water hit the floor, spilling it everywhere.

Luke sighed and bent to pick it up, and gave Ben an annoyed look. “Tutor the girl.”

He could see that between the practicality of the arrangement and his uncle’s mood, he wasn’t going to win this one. _“Fine.”_

“Watch the attitude, Ben.” Luke warned sharply.

“I don’t have—”

His master raised his hand and cut him off. “I haven’t slept in a week, I’m tired.” 

Ben’s irritation immediately melted into worry. No sleep, no food, and no water for five days was as ridiculous as it was dangerous.

Luke seemed to simmer down with the admission, and wiped a hand over his face. He looked ten years older. “You did good while I’ve been out. Just keep it up for another eighteen hours.”

Ben nodded, and reached to collect his uncle’s mess of dirty dishes. He stood and lumbered towards the door, happy to leave his master to rest and recover. “Goodnight.”

“Ben...”

He paused at the curtain and turned back towards his uncle. “What?”

"She only told me enough to allow her to stay, which is what she wanted." Luke warned gravely. Ben swallowed hard around the lump in his throat. "She's still hiding a lot. Be _vigilant_ , try to figure out what she wants next. Maybe when she comes with more information we might not be blindsided."

He worked his jaw. “You want me to press her for information?”

“No, just…” Luke sighed. “I don’t know. I need to sleep.”

"She told you who her grandfather was, and you disappeared to meditate on whether or not you were even going to help her until your body physically couldn’t handle it anymore.” Ben said slowly. “Is he really such a monster that it has _you_ so worried?”

There was absolutely no hesitation. "Yes."

Ben’s posture went rigid. “ _Master_ , you—” 

"If her grandfather is alive…” Luke started, struggling to stand. Once he was on his feet, he gave his nephew a very serious, very haunted look. “...it means that there will be a _war_. One that _we_ will have to fight."

Ben shifted his weight, and something like fear might have been starting to settle in his gut. "You make it sound like her grandfather was Darth Vader or something."

Luke snorted. "If only."

* * *

Ben watched Hennix and Garen get Rey set up in a hut a few yards down the cobbled walkway. Lamps that hadn’t been lit in years were now illuminating an old hut, grass and weeds having tried to reclaim the shelter or swallow it entirely. It wasn’t unsound or even damaged, but it had been empty for the last half-decade.

Kovek had been Luke’s seventh student years ago. He’d started the same time as the others, but an illness in his genetics ate him alive before he’d turned fifteen. Mara had been close with him, and when he’d passed, Voe kept her close.

Neither were going to like that a stranger was taking up residence in his old room. They'll feel that Rey was trespassing on a place that had been more or less an unspoken memorial than the grave where he rested.

Eventually, Lor San Tekka came by with another alien from his congregation and gave her a crate of belongings. She freely gave them both long hugs, and held San Tekka’s hand as they spoke. Tai and Hennix left, and after a while, so did the pilgrims.

Rey took her things inside and brought some old things out, either too musty or dust-covered to be of any use. It seemed to take until sundown before she was finally done, and it wasn’t until the sky bled red with twilight that Ben realized he’d been observing her for the better part of an hour.

He turned away from his window, rubbing his eyes tiredly. His mind swam with all that he’d spoken to his uncle about earlier, and what it could mean if her grandfather was so dangerous, and how dangerous her secrets could potentially be. 

Ben stood and stretched painfully, reaching to release the curtain over his viewport.

She must have noticed his movement, and just before she closed her door, she spotted him. 

She gives him a little smile and a smaller wave.

Ben quirked his lips and released the curtain.

  
  



End file.
